Each of the four gospels contains a story about Jesus appearing to His disciples after the Sunday morning when they had found the sepulcher empty. For example, see Matthew 28:16-20; Mark 16:14-19; Luke 24:13-33; John 20:19-31, and John 21.

In Luke, there’s a story of two disciples walking from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, a walk of about seven miles. Shortly after they leave the city they are approached by another traveler who has noticed their troubled faces and serious talk and asks them what is troubling them. Walking along together, they ask the stranger, “Haven’t you heard of the troubles in Jerusalem, how the prophet from Galilee, who we hoped would be the one to save Israel, was given up to be crucified? And strange to say, when some of the women went on the third day to anoint His body, they saw angels who told them that he was not there but was risen from the dead.”

On hearing this, the traveler chides them for not believing, and says “Don’t you see that Christ had to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?” The stranger then tells the two disciples many things concerning Jesus, from the books of Moses, and the prophets, in the Old Testament. The two disciples listen with awe, but do not recognize the stranger. At length they arrive at Emmaus. The stranger appears to want to go on when the two stop, but they beg him to stop also, because it’s getting late in the day, and they want to hear more. So they all sit down to share the evening meal, and when the stranger takes up the loaf of bread and breaks it and gives them pieces, their eyes are opened and they recognize Him, and He vanishes.

One can imagine the stunned awe that came over them both as they realized that this was Jesus. They knew He was crucified, and yet He had walked and talked to them for several hours. The women were right! The angels were right! He was alive!

The New Church believes that there are internal meanings to all the stories in the Word of the Lord, the sacred scriptures, and that this internal meaning, within the literal stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joshua, Samuel, David, and the rest, and all the sayings of the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi, and the four gospels… this meaning is what makes the Word holy.

So what can we see here in this story? Well, that internal meaning in “Moses and the prophets” is the story of Jesus’ life in the world, from His birth in Bethlehem through all His growing years until His “death” and then His rising. Because Jesus knew that, and had certainly read the Scriptures and understood them internally, He knew for a long time how His earthly life was going to close, and that it was necessary for it to close as had been “written”, in order to save the human race. So He told the two disciples that story as they walked toward Emmaus.

More about that walk... In the Word, any mention of walking is really referring to how we live our lives from day to day. In many stories of the Word, it is said that someone walked with God. It is said that we should walk in His ways and that we should walk the straight and narrow path.

Also in this story we are told that this was a journey of sixty stadia (in the original Greek). Sixty (or other multiples of "six") represents the lifelong work of rejecting the temptations that come from our inborn selfishness. Apocalypse Explained 648. So, this journey to Emmaus means our life’s journey - as a person that is trying to follow the Lord’s teachings and become an angel.

The destination was Emmaus. In the Word any city represents a doctrine, an organized set of truths that we have put in order so that we can live according to them -- our rules of life. See Arcana Coelestia 402. They are not necessarily good, as with Jerusalem or Bethlehem, but can also be evil doctrines, e.g. Sodom or Babylon. My dictionary tells me that the name Emmaus means “hot springs”. Another universal meaning in the Word is that water means truth in its beneficial uses, but can also mean truth twisted into falsity by those in hell, in an opposite sense. See, for example, Arcana Coelestia 790. Think of the wells that Abraham dug, or the waters that Jesus promised to the woman of Samaria as they talked by Jacob’s well, or the pure river of water flowing out from under the throne in the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. In its converse sense, where water is destructive, think of the flood that destroyed all but Noah and his family, or the Red Sea that had to be parted so that the children of Israel could cross. The springs represented by Emmaus were holy truths bubbling up from the Word for us to use. And these are hot springs, and heat means love. So that's our destination, where truth and love together are flowing out for us to use, in a continual stream from the Lord.

This plain little anecdote about the disciples meeting the Lord on the road to Emmaus isn't just a story about Jesus's resurrection with a spiritual body. It is also a story of how we should be living our lives. We can be traveling toward heaven, listening to the Lord, walking in the way with him, and at the end He will break bread and have supper with us.

130. The following passages establish that prophets represented the state of their church as regards doctrine from the Word, and living in accordance with that doctrine. The prophet Isaiah was commanded to strip the sackcloth from his loins and his shoe from his foot, and to go naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a token (Isaiah 20:2-3). The prophet Ezekiel was commanded to represent the state of the church by packing his bags for an exile, and to move to another place in the sight of the Children of Israel; he was to bring out his baggage during the day, and go out in the evening through a hole in the house-wall; he was to cover his face so as not to see the ground, and thus he would be a token for the house of Israel, and he was to say, 'Behold, I am your token; as I have done, so shall it be with you' (Ezekiel 12:3-7, 11). The prophet Hosea was commanded to represent the state of the church by taking a prostitute as a wife; he did so, and she bore him three children, one of whom he called Jezreel, the second No-pity, and the third Not-my-people. Again he was commanded to go and love a woman who was loved by another man, an adulteress; and he bought her (Hosea 1:2-9; 3:2-3). Another prophet was commanded to put ashes on his eyes, and to allow himself to be struck and beaten (1 Kings 20:35, 38).

The prophet Ezekiel was commanded, in order to represent the state of the church, to take a brick and to draw a picture of Jerusalem on it; to lay siege to it, and make a rampart and a mound to attack it; to place an iron griddle between himself and the city; and to lie on his left side and on his right side. Also to take wheat, barley, lentils, millet and spelt, and to make bread from them; also to make a cake of barley mixed with human dung; and because he begged off this, he was allowed to make it with cow-dung. It was said to him:

Lie on your left side, and put the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it; for the number of days that you lie on that side, you shall carry their iniquity. For I will make you carry the iniquity of the house of Israel for a number of days equal to the years of their iniquity, namely, three hundred and ninety days. When you have completed this period, you are to lie a second time on your right side, to carry the iniquity of the house of Judah, Ezekiel 4:1-15.

[2] It is clear from what follows this passage that the prophet by these actions carried the iniquities of the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and did not remove and so expiate them, but merely represented and demonstrated them:

Thus said Jehovah, the Children of Israel shall eat their bread unclean. Behold, I break the staff of bread, so that they may lack bread and water, and they shall be desolate, a man and his brother, and they shall waste away because of their iniquity, Ezekiel 4:13, 16-17.

The meaning is similar where it is said of the Lord:

He bore our sicknesses, He carried our pains. Jehovah made the iniquities of us all to fall upon Him. By His knowledge He made many righteous, in that He carried their iniquities Isaiah 53:4, 6, 11.

The whole of this chapter deals with the Lord's passion.

[3] The details of the Lord's passion show clearly that as the Prophet He represented the state of the Jewish church with regard to the Word. For example, His betrayal by Judas; His arrest and conviction by the chief priests and the elders; His being beaten; His head being struck with a reed; His crowning with a crown of thorns; the dividing of His garments, and the casting of lots for His tunic; His crucifixion; His being given vinegar to drink; His side being pierced; His burial and resurrection on the third day.

His betrayal by Judas meant that He was betrayed by the Jewish nation, which possessed the Word, since Judas represented that nation. His arrest and conviction by the chief priests and elders meant that the whole of that church so behaved. His being beaten, being spat upon in the face, being flogged and having His head struck with a reed meant their similar treatment of the Word as regards the Divine truths it contains. The crowning with thorn meant that they falsified and adulterated these truths. The dividing of His garments and throwing lots for His tunic meant that they threw to the winds all the truths of the Word, but not its spiritual sense, which is what the tunic meant. The crucifixion meant that they destroyed and profaned the whole Word. Their giving Him vinegar to drink meant that they offered only falsified truths, which is why He did not drink it. The piercing of His side meant that they utterly extinguished all the truth and all the good of the Word. His burial meant the rejection of all He had left from His mother. His resurrection on the third day meant His glorification, or the union of His Human with the Father's Divine. From this it is now plain that 'carrying iniquities' does not mean removing them, but representing the profaning of truths in the Word.