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.

119. The second Memorable Experience from THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED. ¹ Awakened one time out of sleep I fell into a profound meditation concerning God; and when I looked upwards I saw in the heaven above me a most brilliant white light in an oval form. As I fixed my gaze upon that light it receded from the centre towards the circumference. And behold, heaven was then opened to me, and I saw magnificent things, and angels standing in a circle on the southern side of the opening in conversation with one another. And because I was consumed with desire to hear what they were talking about, I was allowed to hear first the sound which was full of celestial love, and afterwards their speech which was full of wisdom from that love. They spoke together concerning the One God, and concerning union with Him, and salvation thence. They mentioned ineffable things, many of which could not be expressed in the words of any natural language. But as I had often been among angels in their heaven, and had, then, a similar speech, because I was in a similar state, therefore I was now able to understand them, and to select from their conversation some particulars which may be intelligibly expressed in natural language.

[2] They said that the Divine Being (Esse) is One, the Same, the Very Self, and Indivisible; that so also is the Divine Essence, because the Divine Being (Esse) is the Divine Essence; that so, likewise, is God, because the Divine Essence, which is also the Divine Being (Esse), is God. They illustrated this by spiritual ideas, saying that the Divine Being (Esse) cannot possibly become several, in each of which is the Divine Being (Esse) and yet remain One, the Same, the Very Self, and Indivisible; for then each would think from His own Esse, out of and by Himself. If then each thought also from the Others and by the Others unanimously, and at the same time, they would then be several unanimous Gods, not one God. For unanimity, being the agreement of several and at the same time of each One from Himself and by Himself, does not agree with the unity of God, but implies plurality. They did not say a plurality of Gods because they could not; for the light of heaven from which they thought, and in which their words were spoken, prevented it. They also said that when they wished to pronounce the word "Gods" and to speak of each as a Person by Himself, the effort of utterance was immediately turned into the expression "One God," yea, "The Only God."

[3] To this they added that the Divine Being (Esse) is the Divine Being (Esse) in Itself, not from Itself, because "from Itself" postulates a Being (Esse) in Itself from another thus it supposes a God from a God, which is impossible. What is from God is not called God, but the Divine. For what is God from God, or what is God born of God from eternity, and what is God from God proceeding through a God born from eternity, but mere words in which there is not the least light from heaven? They said further that the Divine Being (Esse), which in Itself is God, is THE SAME; not the Same simply but infinitely; that is, the Same from eternity to eternity that it is the Same everywhere, and with everyone and in everyone, but that all variation and change are in the recipient, and are caused by the state of the recipient.

[4] That the Divine Being (Esse), which is God in Himself, is the Very Self, they illustrated in this way. God is the Very Self because He is Love itself and Wisdom itself; or, what is the same, because He is Good itself and Truth itself, thence Life itself. Unless these were the Very Self in God, they would not be anything in heaven or the world, since there would be nothing in them having relation to the Very Self. For every quality draws its nature from this, that there is the Very Self from which it is, and to which it has relation in order that it may be what it is. This Very Self, which is the Divine Being (Esse), is not in place, but is with those and in those who are in place according to reception. For neither place nor progression from one place to another can be asserted of Love and Wisdom, or of Good and Truth, or of Life thence, which are the Very Self in God, yea, God Himself; these are without place, hence their omnipresence. Wherefore the Lord says that He is in the midst of them, and that He is in them and they in Him.

[5] But, as He cannot be received by anyone such as He is in Himself, He appears as He is in Himself as a sun above the angelic heaven, and that which proceeds from it as light is Himself as to wisdom, and that which proceeds as heat is Himself as to love. He Himself is not that sun but the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom in their immediate emanation from Him appear round about Himself as a sun before the angels. He Himself, within the sun, is a Man, our Lord Jesus Christ, both as to the Originating Divine and as to the Divine Human; inasmuch as the Very Self, which is Love itself and Wisdom itself, was His soul from the Father; thus Divine Life which is Life in itself. It is otherwise with every man; for in man the soul is not life, but a recipient of life. This the Lord also teaches when He says, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life;John 14:6. And in another place, As the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself. John 5:26. Life in Himself is God. The angels added that those who are in any spiritual light may see plainly from these things that the Divine Esse, which is also the Divine Essence, because it is One, the Same, the Very Self, and thence indivisible, cannot possibly exist in more than one; and that, if it should be said that it does so, manifest contradictions would follow.

[6] After hearing these things, the angels perceived in my thought the usual ideas of the Christian Church respecting God as a trinity of Persons in unity, and their unity in trinity; also of the birth of a Son of God from eternity. Whereupon they said to me, "What are you thinking about? Are you thinking of those things from natural light, with which our spiritual light does not agree? Unless you remove those ideas from your thoughts we must close heaven against you and go away." Then I said to them, "Enter, I beseech you, more deeply into my thought, and perchance you will find agreement." And they did so, and saw that by three Persons I mean three proceeding Divine attributes, which are Creation, Redemption and Regeneration, and that those attributes belong to the One God; also that by the birth of a Son of God from eternity, I understand His birth foreseen from eternity and provided in time. I then told them that my natural thought concerning a trinity and unity of persons, and of the birth of a Son of God from eternity, was derived from the doctrine of faith in the Church named after Athanasius, and that this doctrine is correct if, instead of a trinity of Persons, there is substituted a trinity of Person existing solely in the Lord Jesus Christ; and if, instead of the birth of a Son of God from eternity, His birth foreseen from eternity and provided in time is understood; because, as to the Human which He assumed, He is expressly called the Son of God.

[7] Then the angels said, "That is good." And they asked me to say on their testimony that if anyone does not approach the Lord as the God of heaven and earth, he cannot come into heaven; because heaven is heaven from this One and Only God; and that this God is Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah Lord, the Creator from eternity, the Redeemer in time, and the Regenerator to eternity; thus, Who is at once Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and that this is the Gospel which is to be preached. After this the heavenly light which I had seen before returned, and by degrees descended and filled the interiors of my mind and enlightened my ideas concerning the unity and trinity of God. And then I saw that the ideas which I had first had on the trinity, and which were merely natural, were separated as chaff is separated from the wheat by winnowing, and were carried away as by a wind to the northern part of heaven, and there dispersed.

Footnotes: