Nope, principal of flight between a PA28 and 737 aren't the same. In your Cherokee you'd easily be able to bleed of speed by closing the throttle and letting the aircraft reasonably quickly reducing speed, maybe increasing pitch slightly. Not so much in the 737! Jet engines react very differently from 1 prop on the front of the plane. They are fairly slow as well and the plane can, at times, feel a lot more sluggish in comparison to your SEP.
Now, if you were to sit on that 737 Captain's seat and knock off all the automatics at 2000ft you'll spend the remaining 6 miles of flight disastrously overcorrecting. You won't be used to the sluggish response of the 737 and you'll add too much power, then take off too much, then pitch up and down excessively and roll around too much. You will be too used to the flight dynamics of the PA28 that you won't be able to get used to the new aircraft in less than 3 minutes with all that pressure on you.
And your mate who has had an experience flight in a 747 ... do you think the simulator he flew didn't have the flight characteristics changed for the beginner user, as opposed to the characteristics used for training airline pilots in it?
