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.

171. Falsity. There are many kinds of falsity-as many as there are kinds of evil, in fact-and evils and falsities retain the nature of their sources, which are many: 1188, 1212, 4729, 4822, 7574. Falsity that comes from evil, or evil-based falsity, is one thing; evil that comes from falsity, or falsity-based evil, which leads in turn to further falsity, is another: 1679, 2243. From any false idea that is taken as a first principle further false ideas flow in an unbroken series: 1510, 1511, 4717, 4721. There are falsities that are the result of cravings arising from our love for ourselves and for the world, and there are falsities that are the result of misleading sensory impressions: 1295, 4729. There are falsities that arise from what our religion has taught us and there are falsities that arise from our ignorance: 4729, 8318, 9258. There is falsity that contains some good and there is falsity that contains no good: 2863, 9304, 10109, 10302. There are also things that have been falsified: 7318, 7319, 10648.

The nature of falsity that comes from evil: 6359, 9304, 10302. The nature of evil that comes from falsity: 2408, 4818, 7272, 8265, 8279. The hells are surrounded by falsities that come from evil, which look like storm clouds and unclean waters: 8137, 8146, 8210. Waters like these symbolize falsities: 739, 790, 7307. The things that are said by the people who are in hell are falsities that come from evil: 1695, 7351, 7352, 7357, 7392, 7699. Left to their own devices, people intent on evil cannot think anything but falsity: 7437.

Some false religious beliefs harmonize with what is good and some do not: 9258. False religious beliefs that do not clash with what is good do not lead to evil except in people who are intent on leading an evil life: 8318. False religious beliefs are not held against people who are intent on doing good, but they are held against people who are intent on doing evil: 8051, 8149. Every falsity is something we can convince ourselves of, and when we have done so it seems to us to be the truth: 5033, 6865, 8521, 8780. We should be careful not to convince ourselves of falsity in matters of religion because in this arena we are particularly susceptible to false convictions: 845, 8780. How damaging false convictions are: 794, 806, 5096, 7686. False convictions continually generate arguments to support their own falsity: 1510, 1511, 2477. People who are convinced of falsities are inwardly imprisoned: 5096. In the other life, when those who have powerful false convictions encounter other people they shut down the rationality of those others and virtually suffocate them: 3895, 5128.

Truths that are not genuine and even falsities can be associated with genuine truths, but only falsities within which there is goodness, not falsities within which there is evil: 3470, 3471, 4551, 4552, 7344, 8149, 9298. If falsities have goodness within them, they are accepted by the Lord as if they were truths: 4736, 8149. Any act of goodness whose quality has been shaped by falsity is accepted by the Lord if it was done in ignorance and innocence, and if the aim behind it was good: 7887.

Evil falsifies truth because it bends it toward something evil and applies it to that evil: 8094, 8149. A truth that has been applied to some evil and used to support it is called a falsification: 8062. Falsified truth is opposed to what is true and what is good: 8062. More on falsifications of truth: 7318, 7319, 10648.