John 20:18
John 20:1818Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them what He had said to her.
Witnesses receive Mary Magdalene's announcement as part of the resurrection witness pattern, fitting the Watchtower's framing of the resurrection as a real event by which Jesus continues his ministry as a spirit creature. The Greek verb "I have seen" (heōraka) tends not to be flagged for what it implies about the visible bodily appearance of the risen Lord.
Mary's announcement is Greek heōraka — "I have seen." Same verb used at ("we have seen the Lord") and at , where the angels promise the disciples "you will see him." In , the angels at the ascension say Jesus "will come in the same manner as you have seen him going into the sky" — visibly, bodily, with witnesses. And promises "every eye will see him." The Watchtower's invisible-parousia doctrine of 1914 cannot be reconciled with these uses of "see." Mary did not "discern him with mental eyes" at verse 18 — she saw him with her own eyes, addressed him by name in verse 16, and was told not to keep clinging to him in verse 17. The consistent New Testament pattern is bodily, visible appearances by the risen Christ — and that is the pattern by which he promised to return.