Further Biblical Testimony Against "Soul Sleep"

I have covered the issue of soul sleep before. One version is held by Seventh-Day Adventists and teaches exactly that, that the spirit of the dead is asleep in the grave, waiting to be revived at the Second Coming. The Jehovah's Witnesses hold a different version, according to which the spirit of the dead disintegrates, and is recreated at the Second Coming.  Either way, the doctrine is unbiblical.

First, consider Acts 7:59: "And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.'" The context is the account of the martyrdom of Stephen. Just as he is about to die, he proclaims the words recorded here. The verb "receive" is a present tense imperative. Present tense, not future tense. He expects to pass in the coming seconds from his current circumstances into the waiting arms of Jesus. He expected no intervening period of two-thousand years - so far - before that meeting. Unlike the members of the Watchtower, he expected that blessing now! 

Next, look at Hebrews 12:23: "[You have come] to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect." Here the author describes the Heavenly Jerusalem, the glorified church, sometimes called the Church Triumphant, which consists of "spirits made perfect." Notice again the present tense. These spirits are the saints already in Heaven, in their glorified state. They are not spirits in the author's far future, as the Watchtower and SDA's claim. 

On top of the proofs I have given in the past (use the "soul sleep" tag at the bottom), these verses easily demonstrate that the soul sleep doctrine, whether of the Seventh-Day Adventist version or of the Jehovah's Witness version, is a manmade doctrine, invented in spite of the biblical testimony, not derived from it.