John 20:27
John 20:2727Then Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and look at My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Stop doubting and believe.”
The Watchtower teaches that Jesus' physical body was either dissolved into gases or otherwise removed, and he was raised as a spirit creature — Michael the Archangel returning to spirit form. The Thomas episode is read as Jesus materialising a temporary body to convince his disciples, since a "real" spirit- creature resurrection would not have been visible or touchable. The crucial detail — that Jesus shows the wounds of his crucifixion — is taken as accommodation to weak faith rather than as proof of bodily continuity.
Jesus invites Thomas to put his finger in the nail-marks and thrust his hand into his side. The body Thomas is asked to touch is the same body that was crucified — wounds and all. Compare verse 25 and verse 39 of Luke 24: "see my hands and my feet ... a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." Jesus deliberately picks "flesh and bones" instead of "flesh and blood" — the Pauline idiom for mortal weakness — to make the contrast explicit. The risen body is real, physical, and continuous with the pre-resurrection body. If the body had been dissolved into gases, Thomas would have been touching a fabrication. Either Jesus deceived his disciples, or the Watchtower's spirit-creature resurrection cannot stand. And the next verse settles the chapter: Thomas, touching the wounds, cries out "My Lord and my God." Jesus does not correct him.