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.

8882. 'You shall not take the name of your God in vain' means instances in which the truth or the good of faith is profaned or blasphemed. This is clear from the meaning of 'the name of God' as everything in its entirety with which the Lord is worshipped, thus every truth or good of faith, dealt with in 2724, 3006, 6674; and from the meaning of 'taking in vain' as profaning and blaspheming. To be precise 'taking God's name in vain' means turning what is true into what is bad, that is, believing it to be true and yet living a bad life. It is also turning what is good into what is false, that is, living in a holy manner and yet not believing. Both are forms of profanation, 4601. Belief belongs to the understanding and life to the will; consequently thought and will in people whose belief is out of keeping with their life are divided. But the will is entering constantly into the understanding, for the understanding is the outward form assumed by the will, that is, the will brings itself to light there. This being so, when a person thinks in one way and lives in another, truth and evil or goodness and falsity are combined with each other; that is, things of heaven with a person are combined with those of hell. This combination cannot be dissolved, and so the person cannot be healed, except by a tearing apart which takes away with it everything of spiritual life. Therefore people who are like this are sent to the most horrible hell of all, where they suffer dreadful torments.

[2] This is how the Lord's words in Matthew should be understood,

Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy of the Spirit will not be forgiven people. If anyone speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but he who speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the one to come. Matthew 12:31-32.

Also by these words in Luke,

When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person he passes through dry places seeking rest - and if he does not find any he says, I will return to my house out of which I came. And if when he comes he finds it swept and decorated, he goes away and brings seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. And the last things of the person become worse than the first. Luke 11:24-26.

[3] By these words the Lord is describing the profanation of truth. 'When the unclean spirit goes out' is used to mean acknowledgement of and real belief in truth, 'the house which has been swept' to mean a life contrary to truths, and 'his coming back with seven others' to mean a state of profanation. These are the things which are meant by 'taking God's name in vain'. The fact that the person cannot be healed from such a condition and so receive forgiveness is also meant by the words following immediately after - 'Jehovah will not render him innocent who takes His name in vain' - which are used to mean that this thing cannot be forgiven. For more about what profanation is and with whom it exists, see 593, 1003, 1008, 1010, 1059, 1327, 1328, 2051, 2426, 3398, 3399, 3402, 3489, 6348, 6595, 6960, 6963, 6971, 8394

[4] 'Taking God's name in vain' also means blasphemy, which takes place when fun is poked at those things which belong to the Word or to religious teachings and belief, thus which are holy, and they are dragged through the mud and thereby defiled, dealt with in 4050, 5390. But in respect of the Israelite nation, which did not acknowledge any good or truth of faith meant by 'God's name', their use of Jehovah's name, and also of the commandments and statutes they were commanded, in the worship of idols is meant by 'taking God's name in vain'. It was what they did in the wilderness when they worshipped the golden calf; they not only presented it burnt offerings and sacrifices, and ate of consecrated elements from them, but also called the day of that celebration 'a feast to Jehovah'. This is recorded in Moses as follows,

Aaron made out of the gold a molded calf, and they said, These are your gods, O Israel. who caused you to come up out of the land of Egypt. When Aaron saw it he built an altar in front of it, and made a proclamation and said, Tomorrow there will be a feast to Jehovah. Therefore they rose up in the morning of the next day and presented burnt offerings and brought eucharistic offerings. Exodus 32:4-6.

Jehovah's words at the time, concerning those who had taken the name of Jehovah God in vain by doing all this, make it clear that they could not be forgiven, meant by their not being rendered innocent. Those words spoken to Moses are,

Him who has sinned against Me I will blot out of My book. All the same, go, lead this people to the place of which I have spoken to you. But on the day of My visitation, I will visit them for their sin. Exodus 32:33-34.