The Bible

 

Luke 24:14

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14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

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On the Road to Emmaus

By Joe David

Lelio Orsi's painting, Camino de Emaús, is in the National Gallery in London, England.

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.

From Swedenborg's Works

 

Apocalypse Revealed #343

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343. Holding back the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. This symbolizes the Lord's holding back and restraining a closer and thus stronger influx into the lower regions where good people were attached to evil ones.

It must be known that a last judgment takes place when evil people multiply below the heavens in the world of spirits, and this to such a degree that angels in the heavens cannot continue in the state of their love and wisdom, as they are then without a support and foundation. Since this results from a multiplication of evil people below, therefore in order to preserve the angels' state, the Lord flows in more and more strongly with His Divinity, and this continually until no influx can preserve them unless the evil people below are separated from the good. This is accomplished by a subsidence and closing in of the heavens, with a consequently stronger influx, until the evil cannot bear it. And at that point the evil flee away and cast themselves into hell.

This, too, is what is symbolized in the preceding chapter by the statement, "They said to the mountains and rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?'" (Revelation 6:16-17)

[2] Now for the exposition:

The four winds symbolize an influx of the heavens. The earth, the sea, and every tree symbolize all the lower regions and all that they contain - the earth and sea symbolizing all the lower regions, and every tree all that they contain.

That a wind symbolizes influx - properly speaking, the influx of truth into the intellect - can be seen from the following passages:

Thus says the Lord Jehovih, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live." (Ezekiel 37:9-10)

(There appeared four chariots to which were harnessed four horses.) These are the four winds of the heavens... (Zechariah 6:1-5)

You must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and... cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. (John 3:7-8)

The Maker of the earth... prepares the world by His wisdom... He brings the wind out of His treasuries. (Jeremiah 10:12-13; 51:15-16, cf. Psalms 135:7)

He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow. He declares His Word..., His statutes and His judgments... (Psalms 147:18-19)

It praises Jehovah..., the stormy wind, doing His Word... (Psalms 148:7-8)

(Jehovah) makes His angels winds... (Psalms 104:4)

(Jehovah) rode... upon the wings of the wind. (Psalms 18:10, cf. 104:3)

The wings of the wind are Divine truths that flow in. The Lord is therefore called "the breath of our nostrils" (Lamentations 4:20), and we are told that He "breathed into (Adam's) nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7); moreover, that "He breathed on (the Disciples) and said..., "Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:21-22). The Holy Spirit is the Divine truth emanating from the Lord, the influx of which into the Disciples was represented and thus symbolized by the Lord's breathing on them.

[3] A wind and breathing symbolize the influx of Divine truth into the intellect, owing to the correspondence of the lungs with the intellect, a treatment of which may be seen in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 371-429.

Since a closer and stronger Divine influx through the heavens dispels truths in the case of evil people, therefore a wind symbolizes the dispersion of truth in them, and thus their conjunction with hell and perishing - as may be seen from the following passages:

I will bring upon Elam the four winds from the four ends of heaven and scatter him. (Jeremiah 49:36)

You shall scatter them, that the wind may carry them away and the storm disperse them. (Isaiah 41:16)

The breath of Jehovah, like a stream of brimstone, sets them on fire. (Isaiah 30:33)

The workers of iniquity... perish by the breathing of God, and by the breath of His nostrils they are consumed. (Job 4:8-9)

...the foundations of the world were uncovered at the rebuke (of Jehovah), at the blast of the breath of Your nostrils. (Psalms 18:15)

I saw in my vision..., and behold, the four winds... were rushing upon the Great Sea. And four beasts came up... (Daniel 7:2-3ff.)

...from a storm of Jehovah has gone forth fury... It will rush upon the head of the wicked. (Jeremiah 23:19; 30:23)

O my God..., ...pursue them with Your storm, ...frighten them with Your tempest. (Psalms 83:13, 15)

(Jehovah's) way in the storm and in the tempest... (Nahum 1:3)

And so also elsewhere, as in Jeremiah 25:32, Ezekiel 13:13, Hosea 8:7, Amos 1:14, Zechariah 9:14, Psalms 11:6; 50:3; 55:8, and Psalms 107, where we read:

...He commands the stormy wind to blow... (God) causes the storm to subside, so that its waves are still. (Psalms 107:25, 29)

[4] It is apparent from this what is symbolically meant in the spiritual sense by the following:

(Jesus in the boat) rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ."..be still!" And... there was a... calm. (Mark 4:39, cf. Luke 8:23-24)

The sea here symbolizes hell, and the wind an influx from it.

A strong influx, too, is symbolically meant by the east wind in Ezekiel 17:10, Jeremiah 18:17, Ezekiel 19:12, Hosea 13:15, Psalms 48:7. And by that same wind which dried up the Red Sea (Exodus 14:21), regarding which Moses said:

At the blast of Your nostrils the waters were heaped up... You blew with Your wind, the sea covered them. (Exodus 15:8, 10)

It can now be seen from this that holding back the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, symbolizes the holding back and restraining of a closer and thus stronger influx into the lower regions.

  
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Many thanks to the General Church of the New Jerusalem, and to Rev. N.B. Rogers, translator, for the permission to use this translation.