My sister has had a number of experiences and dreams dealing with the dead. She’s not a clairvoyant or psychic, or anything of the sort, but she’s had a number of experiences regarding both humans and animals.
Several years ago when she was working, she dreamed of a young man who approached her. Smiling, he said, “Tell her I’m okay and to not to mourn.” This dream recurred several times. My sister said she had never seen the man before, but he seemed like a very good, decent person.
Weeks later, she walked into her office and a new employee had moved in to a cubicle. She stopped by to say hello and then had a start. There on her desk was a photo of the young man. At first she said nothing, but it kept eating at her. When the woman would go out for lunch, she would walk by her cubicle and look at the photo. Finally she stopped by for a chat, and, at an appropriate time, asked who the man in the photo was. My sister said the woman’s eyes welled up with tears and explained that it had been her fiancée who had been killed weeks before in an automobile accident. My sister felt compelled to relate her experience and while doing so the woman sobbed. It brought her a great deal of comfort and my sister never dreamed about the man again.
The Jehovah's Witnesses are blind as to the state of man between death and resurrection. Even though the scriptures refer to man as either a temple or a tabernacle, and liken death to the removal of a garment, it also refers to death as a sleep. But this is a euphemism, as Paul states: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor: yet what I shall choose I know not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.” (Philippians 1:23-24) There also is Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross: “Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) We know that being put to death in the flesh that Jesus went and “preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:18). Later Peter declares, “For for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” We can only surmise that the thief was one of the dead to whom the Gospel was preached, but with so much evidence of people living after death, it makes me wonder why the Jehovah's Witnesses hang so tenaciously to the soul sleeping doctrine.