The reason I say it is a false doctrine is because (1) Sheol/Hades is wrongly translated as the grave or the pit and (2) sleep is merely a metaphor for death, where a corpse laid in the grave gives the appearance of repose or sleep. Eventually that corpse turns into dust. There is no one sleeping six feet under the soil. Just dust. Not dust and ashes, but just dust, as Adam was told. He was taken from dust and would return to dust. So does every human being.Tell me Enoch what you understand as 'soul sleep'...a term that scripture doesn't use and secondly, why do you think it is a false doctrine?
Death (physical death) is the SEPARATION of the soul and spirit from the body. But where do the souls and spirits go? Once again Sheol and Hades were both wrongly translated as *hell*, but Hell is Gehenna -- the Lake of Fire, created for the devil and his angels.
Jesus said that He would be in *the heart of the earth* or *the lower parts of the earth* for three days and three nights (while His body lay in the tomb): For as [Jonah] was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Mt 12:40) That is Sheol/Hades, --- the region of departed spirits -- located near the core of the earth.
While Jesus did not also say that Jonah was in Sheol/Hades while he was in the whale's belly, Jonah told us that he was actually there: Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly, And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of SHEOL (mistakenly translated as *hell*) cried I, and thou heardest my voice. (Jonah 2:1,2)
We know from Luke 16 that there were actually TWO COMPARTMENTS in Sheol/Hades -- one for the righteous dead (called "Abraham's bosom") and the other for the unrighteous dead (a place of torment to which the Rich Man went). So Jonah was in Sheol/Hades for three days and three nights, and so was Christ.
Until Christ's resurrection, all the OT saints (their souls and spirits) were *silent* in Sheol, in the sense that they did not communicate with the living. But Jonah was not silent when he cried out to the LORD. As we know from Luke 16, they were able to communicate, and Abraham communicated with the Rich Man in Sheol/Hades. However, after the resurrection of Christ, all the OT saints were taken to Heaven from Sheol/Hades (Eph 4:8-10). And since then all the NT saints have gone directly to Heaven (Heb 12:22-24). And no one is sleeping in Heaven, since Paul calls them a *great cloud of witnesses*. Witnesses see and hear what they witness.
And these all [the OT saints], having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise [of the Holy Spirit before Pentecost]:God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect [by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit]. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, (Heb 11:39,40; 12:1)
All of this should tell us that Soul Sleep is a false doctrine, and the death of Stephen and what transpired there (Acts 7 & 8) confirms this.
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