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.

798. Since we say that these Roman Catholics have no conjunction of goodness and truth, because they do not have in them a marriage of the Lord and the church, therefore we must say something here about the power of opening and closing heaven, which goes along with the power of forgiving and retaining sins, ¹ a power that they claim for themselves as the successors of Peter and the Apostles.

(The Lord said to Peter,) ."..on this rock ² I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:18-19)

The Divine truth meant by Peter, on which the Lord will build His church, is the truth confessed by Peter at the time, when He said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16).

The keys of the kingdom of heaven are this, that whatever that rock, meaning the Lord, has bound on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever it has loosed on earth will be loosed in heaven, and it means that the Lord has power over heaven and earth, as He also says in Matthew 28:18, thus the power of saving people who from a heartfelt faith have that confession of Peter.

[2] The Lord's Divine operation to save mankind takes place from the firsts of creation through the lasts of it, and this is what we mean when we say that whatever He has bound or loosed on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven. The last elements by which the Lord operates are those on earth, and indeed, in people. For this reason, that the Lord Himself might be present in the lasts of creation as He is in the firsts of it, He came into the world and assumed human form.

To be shown that every Divine operation of the Lord takes place from the firsts of creation through the lasts of it, thus from Himself in the firsts of it and from Himself in the lasts of it, see Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Love and Wisdom, nos. 217-219 221. Also that this is why the Lord is called the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Almighty, nos. 29-31, 38, 57 above.

[3] Who that is willing cannot see that a person's salvation depends on a continual operation of the Lord in the person from his first infancy to the end of his life, and that it is a work purely Divine, one that can never be granted to any man? It is so Divine that it requires the combination of omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. Moreover, that a person's reformation and regeneration, thus his salvation, is wholly the work of the Lord's Divine providence, may be seen from beginning to end in Angelic Wisdom Regarding Divine Providence.

[4] The Lord's advent itself into the world had as its sole end the salvation of mankind. For this reason He assumed human form, banished the hells, and glorified Himself, and took on omnipotence also in the lasts of creation, which is what is meant by His sitting at the right hand of God. ³

What then is more abominable than to found a religion which sanctions the idea that that Divine power and authority are a man's and no longer the Lord's? Or that heaven will be opened or closed if only a clergyman says, "I absolve you," or "I excommunicate you"? Or that a sin is forgiven, even a heinous one, if only he says, "I forgive it"?

The world holds many devils who, to avoid temporal punishment, use artful schemes and gifts to seek and obtain absolution for their diabolical wickedness. Who can be so insane as to believe that the power exists to let devils into heaven?

[5] We said at the end of no. 790 that Peter represented the church's truth of faith, James the church's charity, and John the good works of the people in the church, and that the twelve Apostles together represented the church in respect to all of its components. Their representing these things is clearly apparent from the Lord's words to them in Matthew:

...when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you... will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matthew 19:28, cf. Luke 22:30)

These words can have no other symbolic meaning than that the Lord will judge all people according to the goods and truths of the church. If this were not the meaning of these words, but if instead the Apostles themselves were meant, all in that great city Babylon who call themselves successors of the Apostles could also claim for themselves, from Pope down to monk, that they will sit on as many thrones as their number, and will judge all throughout the entire world.

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