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.

9274. 'And in the seventh you shall let it rest, and let it lie fallow' means the second state, when the member of the Church is governed by good, and so enjoys peace and serenity. This is clear from the meaning of 'the seventh year' or 'the sabbath' as the time when a person is governed by good and is led by the Lord through good, dealt with in 8495, 8510, 8890, 8893; from the meaning of 'letting the land rest', or not sowing it, as not being led by truths as before; and from the meaning of 'letting it lie fallow' as enjoying peace and serenity. Also, the sabbath was representative of a state of peace in which [goodness and truth] are joined together, see 8494; for letting the land rest and lie fallow represented the rest, serenity, and peace enjoyed by those who are governed by good received from the Lord. Regarding the two states of a person who is being regenerated and coming to have the Church within him, the first being a time when he is led by the truths of faith towards the good of charity, and the second being a time when he is governed by the good of charity, see 7923, 7992, 8505, 8506, 8512, 8513, 8516, 8539, 8643, 8648, 8658, 8685, 8690, 8701, 8772, 9139, 9224, 9227, 9230.

[2] These two states of a person who is being regenerated and coming to have the Church within him have not been known up to now, the chief reason for this being that members of the Church have not drawn a clear distinction between truth and good, nor therefore between faith and charity. Another reason is that they have had no clear idea of the two powers of mind a person has - the understanding and the will - nor any clear idea that the function of the understanding is to see truths and forms of good, and that of the will to be stirred by affection for them and to love them. Consequently it was not possible for them to know that the first state of a person who is being regenerated consists in learning truths and seeing them, and the second state in willing and loving them, and that a person has made them his own only when he desires and loves those he has learned and seen. For the will is the person's true self, and the understanding is its servant. Had people known these things they could then have known and come to see clearly that a person who is being regenerated is endowed by the Lord with both a new understanding and a new will, and that unless he is endowed with both he is not a new person; for understanding is no more than the seeing of things that a person desires and loves, and so is simply a servant, as has been stated. And if people had known this they could consequently have known that the first state of a person who is being regenerated consists in being led by means of truths towards good, and the second state in being led by means of good. They could have known that in this second state order is turned around, that the person is now led by the Lord, and that therefore the person is now in heaven and so enjoys peace and serenity.

[3] This state is what is meant by the seventh day, by the seventh year, and also by a jubilee - which are the sabbath, and the sabbath of sabbaths - and by the land's resting in those years, in keeping with the following in Moses,

Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its produce; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of sabbaths for the land, a sabbath to Jehovah. You shall not sow your field, and you shall not prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap. Leviticus 25:3-5.

And in reference to a jubilee,

In the year of a jubilee you shall not sow, nor shall you reap what grows of its own accord, nor shall you harvest the unattended ¹ vines. Leviticus 25:11, 12.

The person who does not know anything about those two states cannot know either about very many things contained in the Word; for in the Word, especially the prophetical part, the first state is depicted clearly and so is the second. Indeed that person cannot understand the internal sense of the Word, nor even much that is contained in its literal sense, such as the following predictions by the Lord regarding the final period of the Church at the present day, which is there called 'the close of the age', in Matthew,

Then let those who are in Judea flee into the mountains; let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not return to take his clothes. Matthew 24:16-18.

And in Luke,

On that day, whoever will be on the housetop with his vessels in the house, let him not come down to take them away; and whoever is in the field, let him likewise not return to the things behind him. Remember Lot's wife. Luke 17:31-32.

The second state is described in these places, together with a warning not to go back from it to the first, see 3650-3655, 5895 (end), 5897 (end), 8505, 8506, 8510, 8512, 8516.

[4] The fact that those states are distinct and separate from each other is also implied by the following words in Moses,

When you build ² a new house you shall make a parapet for your roof. You shall not sow your vineyard and your field with mixed seed. You shall not plough with an ox and an ass together. You shall not wear a garment made of wool and flax mixed together. ³ Deuteronomy 22:8-11; Leviticus 19:19.

These laws serve to mean that anyone who is in the state of truth, that is, in the first state, cannot be in the state of good, that is, in the second state, nor vice versa, the reason being that one state is the inverse of the other. For in the first state a person looks from the world to heaven, but in the second from heaven to the world. In the first state truths come from the world by way of the understanding into the will, where they become forms of good because they are loved. But in the second state the forms of good so created come from heaven by way of the will into the understanding, where they appear in the form of faith. This faith is saving faith, because it comes out of the good of love, that is, comes from the Lord by way of the good of love; for this faith is charity in outward form.

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