Is soul sleeping real?

[User 32423819]

Does the soul sleep for years when we are dead, waiting for Jesus to come and resurrect us? Or do we go straight to heaven?  

[Garland-Green]

Welcome to the guild! heart

When we read Paul speaking to the Corinthians there is an expectation that to being away from the body is to be present with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:8
We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

Jesus also when talking about the rich man said he opened his eyes immediately after death and found himself in torment.

Luke 16:22-23
The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

That this is not a parable but Jesus recounting a real event is seen in how he names people and in wording like:

Luke 16:19-21
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:

And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,  

[cristobela]

To add more detail: what you're essentially asking is whether there is awareness in death. Yes, there is:

• Isaiah 14:9 (NIV)
  
  9 The realm of the dead below is all astir
      to meet you at your coming;
  it rouses the spirits of the departed to greet you—
      all those who were leaders in the world;
  it makes them rise from their thrones—
      all those who were kings over the nations.
  
  
• Revelation 6:9-11 (NIV)
  
  9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. 10 They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” 11 Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters,[a] were killed just as they had been.
  
  Footnotes:
  
  a. Revelation 6:11 The Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family; also in 12:10; 19:10.

They are talking to, communicating with, and aware of other souls and spirits in death.

And yes, there will be a resurrection of the dead souls back into a body. Everyone in the realm of the dead will come out: the wicked and the righteous. There is awareness of God in death, but that's not the same as being resurrected from the dead back into a living body. And, in death, the soul is aware, but the body is asleep. The body and the soul are not the same thing:

• Matthew 10:28 (NIV)
  
  28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.*
  
  
• Daniel 12:2 (NIV)
  
  2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.
  
  
• Acts 24:15 (NIV)
  
  15 and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
  
  
• John 5:28-29 (NIV)
  
  28 “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.

*note from cristobela: this "hell", mentioned in Matthew 10:28, is Gehenna [the lake of fire], not Hades, the realm of the dead, which also gets translated as "hell" in the English, but they're two entirely different words and entirely different places. One your soul goes to in death, without your body, thus only the soul goes there [Hades/the realm of the dead]; the other, both your soul and your body get cast into whilst alive or after your resurrection from death (since your living body is entering too):

• Revelation 19:20 (NIV)
  
  20 But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
  
  
• Revelation 20:11-15 (NIV)
  
  11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Gehenna is permanent, Hades is not, because all of Hades' dead come out of Hades, and even Hades (hell) itself gets cast into the lake of fire (permanent place/the permanent "hell") where we find the beast and false prophet still in (in the lake of fire, the permanent hell) 1,000 years later when Satan finally gets cast into it too:

• Revelation 20:7-10 (NIV)
  
  7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. 9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

No matter which place—whether Hades or Gehenna—however, the soul is aware. Be it first death or second death.

The trap that is the doctrine of soul sleep is fallen into when one fails to detect the difference between the body and the soul despite Scripture clearly making a distinction between body and soul. Ergo, they conclude, because verses describe the body to be asleep, then that must mean that the soul is asleep too. No, the soul is not asleep, just the body, as Scripture clearly shows: the soul/the immaterial part of you, is aware, even in death, in Hades—and even in Gehenna, the lake of fire, too.

In other words, those who came up with the "soul sleep" doctrine only took selective verses which describe the dead body (from the perspective of someone under the sun), and did not take into account everything, every verse, that can be found—in both the Old Testament and New Testament—describing awareness in death. And awareness in death does not deny the resurrection from death to come. We need a body in order to live with Jesus during the millennial reign on this earth, and to live on the new earth in the new heavens.