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.

9668. 'And you shall set up the dwelling-place according to the plan which you saw on the mountain' means in the four quarters, according to the states of good and of the truth springing from it in the heaven that is represented. This is clear from the meaning of 'the dwelling-place' as a representative of heaven, dealt with in 9594; and from the meaning of 'according to the plan which you saw on the mountain' as to the four quarters according to the states of good and of the truth springing from it in heaven. This is what 'the plan according to which the dwelling-place was to be set up' serves to mean, Mount Sinai where it was seen being heaven, see 9420. From the description that is given it is evident that the dwelling-place was positioned lengthways from east to west, and that the entrance was at the east end and the ark at the west. The sides therefore were to the south and to the north. The eastern quarter of the dwelling-place represented the state of good on the rise, the western quarter the state of good on the decline, the southern quarter the state of truth dwelling in light, and the northern quarter the state of truth dwelling in shade.

[2] The entrance was towards the eastern quarter because the Lord enters heaven by way of the good of love, as also becomes clear in Ezekiel, where the new temple is the subject and the following words occur,

He brought me to the gate which was facing towards the east, and behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east. And the glory of Jehovah entered the house by the way of the gate, the face of which is towards the east; and the glory of Jehovah filled the house. Ezekiel 43:1-6.

And after this,

Jehovah said to me, The gate facing east shall be shut and not opened, and no man (vir) shall enter by it; but Jehovah, the God of Israel, will enter by it. Ezekiel 44:1-2.

From these words it is plainly evident that the Lord alone enters heaven by way of the good of love, and that the good of love from the Lord fills heaven and composes it. 'The east' means the Lord in respect of the good of love because the Lord is the Sun of heaven, 3636, 3643, 7078, 7083, 7171, 8644, 8812. But in heaven things are positioned in such a way that the east is where the Lord appears as the Sun, straight before the right eye, 4321 (end), 7078, 7171. From there towards the west, thus in a direct line from the east and towards the west, are those with whom the good of love is present; but to the south are those dwelling in the light of truth, and to the north those in the shade of truth. All who are in heaven look towards the Lord, for to look frontwards there is to look towards Him. No one there can look backwards away from Him, no matter how far they turn themselves about, see 4321 (end). But this is an arcanum which the natural man cannot take in. These are the kinds of things that were represented by the plan seen by Moses on the mountain, according to which the dwelling-place was to be set up.