Jehovah’s Witnesses hold several doctrines that contradict the clear teaching of Scripture. One of the most significant is their denial of Christ’s bodily resurrection. They believe that His physical body is still in the grave and will remain there forever.

Despite the fact that Jesus invited Thomas to touch His hands and His side. It is despite the fact that He told the apostles that He was not a spirit but was physically present among them. And it is despite the fact that Jesus attempted to reveal Himself through His resurrected body and the empty tomb.

Yet Jehovah’s Witnesses still claim that Jesus did not rise physically.

Listen to what they say:

“Was Jesus raised in the flesh, and does he have a fleshy body in heaven? No! Jesus sacrificed his human flesh forever as a ransom for mankind, snd he was made alive in the spirit, or as a spirit person with immortality. It was necessary that the man Christ Jesus should die, but just as necessary that he should remain dead.” (Reasoning from the Scriptures, pg. 334)

This directly contradicts the Bible. It clearly contradicts John 2:19–21, where Jesus is speaking with the Pharisees and says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

The Pharisees responded with disbelief, saying, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and You will raise it up in three days?”

Scripture makes it clear that Jesus was speaking about the temple of His body. When Jesus was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.“

Jesus was referring to the temple of His body. Scripture leaves no doubt, Jesus was referring to His own body and foretelling His bodily resurrection. Even the apostles initially believed Jesus was a ghost. They were frightened and thought they were seeing a spirit. Jesus immediately corrected them.

This truth is made clear in Luke 24:36–43.

Scripture says:

“Now as they were talking about these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, ‘Peace to you.’ But they were startled and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit. And He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I Myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. When he said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they still did not believe for joy and marveled, He said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave Him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate it before them.”

The evidence becomes even stronger in Luke 24. Jesus was alive in a real, physical body. The apostles thought they were seeing a ghost or a spirit, but Jesus corrected them immediately. He asked, “Why are you doubting?“

Then He pointed to His body and said, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I Myself. Handle me and see…” He goes on to say, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

Jesus not only declared that He had a body of flesh and bones, but He also pointed to the visible evidence standing before them. He was telling the apostles that they could see that he had a physical body. To remove any remaining doubt, He asked for something to eat and physically ate the fish in their presence. The evidence is unmistakable. Jesus did not merely appear as a spirit; He rose physically from the dead.

There is no way around the plain reading of these passages. So how do Jehovah’s Witnesses respond? Shockingly, they argue that Jesus only appeared to have a physical body. In conversations with many Jehovah’s Witnesses, they have consistently explained that Jesus did not possess a real physical body after His resurrection. Instead, they believe He simply made Himself appear to have a body to convince His disciples that He was alive and to strengthen their faith.

Then there is John 20:24–29, where Thomas doubts that Jesus had truly risen from the dead. The other apostles told Thomas they had seen the risen Lord, but he refused to believe them. When Jesus appeared to the disciples, even though the doors were locked, He stood before Thomas and said, “Put your finger here and see My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Do not disbelieve but believe.”

Once again, Jesus invited one of His disciples to examine His physical body. He did not tell Thomas to believe without evidence. Instead, He presented the very wounds from the crucifixion as proof that He had truly risen. Thomas’s response is one of the clearest professions of faith in the New Testament. He fell before Jesus and declared, “My Lord and my God.”

Yet in the book, You Can Live Forever (p. 145), Jehovah’s Witnesses state:

“After he rose, he used a body with wound holes in order to convince Thomas of who he was. Only because Thomas would not believe did Jesus appear in a body like that in which he had died.”

Elsewhere, they go even further, stating:

“We deny that Jesus was raised in the flesh, and we challenge any statement to that effect.” (Charles Taze Russell, Studies in Scriptures, 1917)

This is astonishing. Scripture plainly teaches that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, while Jehovah’s Witnesses explicitly deny it. Their position implies that Jesus intentionally appeared to have a physical body that He did not actually possess just to make the apostles think he had a real body. They claim it was not a physical body but a spirit body. They believe he only rose in spirit not in physical body. Only Jehovah’s Witnesses teach this. Christians do not. From the earliest days of Christianity, believers have taught that Christ rose bodily from the dead and ascended into heaven in that same glorified body.

Think about the implications. What is the purpose of the Ascension? Why would Jesus repeatedly invite His apostles to touch Him, examine His wounds, and watch Him eat if He did not actually possess a physical body? If that were true, every appearance after the Resurrection would have been a deception. Yet the Bible consistently teaches the opposite. Jesus repeatedly demonstrated that He had a real, physical body after His Resurrection.

In John 14:6, Jesus declares, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He tells them, “Touch Me and see that it is I. A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” The biblical account presents the risen Christ as truly possessing a glorified human body.

To deny His bodily resurrection is not the historic Christian faith, it is a belief far more consistent with the ancient Gnostic heresy, which denied the true humanity and bodily reality of Christ. The early Gnostics taught that Jesus was merely a spirit, not truly present in the flesh.

This is why the Apostle John wrote in 1 John 4 that those who deny Christ came in the flesh are promoting the spirit of the antichrist. He was confronting the Gnostic belief that denied the true humanity of Christ. The teaching of Jehovah’s Witnesses closely parallels this error by claiming that Jesus exists only as a spirit after the Resurrection rather than in His glorified body. This is not historic Christianity. It is not a belief held by Christians throughout the centuries. It is a teaching that directly contradicts the testimony of Holy Scripture. If you are a Jehovah’s Witness who is sincerely searching, questioning, or struggling with these issues, I encourage you to examine the biblical evidence for yourself. Read these passages in context and ask whether the Watchtower’s teaching truly reflects the words of Christ.