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.

10026. 'And you shall take some of the blood of the young bull' means Divine Truth accommodated to the natural or external man. This is clear from the meaning of 'the blood' as Divine Truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Good, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'the young bull' as the natural level in a person, which must be purified and must have truth and good implanted in it, dealt with in 9990. The reason why the blood is here spoken of first ¹ and why some of it must be put on the horns of the altar and the remainder poured out at the base of it is that in the Word 'blood' means Divine Truth emanating from the Lord's Divine Good, and by means of that Truth all purification is accomplished. For truth teaches a person what good is and how he ought to live; and when the person knows this an affection for or love of good can start to be implanted, and he can thereby be regenerated. For knowledge must be received before a person can possess faith and lead the life of faith, which is the life of good. For the truth that all purification from evils and falsities, and consequently all regeneration, is accomplished by means of the truths of faith, see the places referred to in 9959.

[2] Those who are ignorant of the inner meaning of the Word, thus those who do not know that 'blood' means Divine Truth nor that purification is accomplished by the Lord by means of it, suppose that a person is made pure by the Lord's blood, by which they understand His suffering on the Cross. But let them know that no one is made pure by the Lord's suffering on the Cross, and so by His blood, only by a life in accord with His commandments, as He Himself teaches in many places. The suffering on the Cross was the final stage of temptation which the Lord underwent and through which He fully glorified His Human, as indeed He Himself says in Luke,

Ought not the Christ to have suffered this and to enter into His glory? Luke 24:26.

For the Lord came into the world to subdue the hells and to restore all things to order, even those in the heavens, which was accomplished through the temptations He allowed Himself to undergo. The suffering on the Cross was the final stage of temptation undergone by Him, through which He gained total victory over the hells, brought order to the heavens, and at the same time glorified His Human. And unless He had done all this, no one could have been saved. But see what has already been shown abundantly on these matters in the places referred to in 9528, 9715, 9937, 10019, and that by 'blood', and also 'the Lord's blood', Divine Truth emanating from His Divine Good is meant, 4735, 6378, 6978, 7317, 7326, 7850, 9127, 9393.

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