Forty Years: Testing Time

The numbers forty and fifty are used many times in the description of the tabernacle (the pattern of heavenly things) in Exodus. The significance of the number forty, (forty equals ten times four), is complete probation to bring to light good or evil. According to correct calendar reckoning since our Lord's birth, it is now four or possibly five years nearer than our calendar indicates to the close of 2000 years since the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This great Jubilee will mark the time when the land is restored to Israel in its entirety with a sure title. It seems reasonable to attach a significance to the fact that at this present time, all of these happenings to Israel are converging. Add four (or possibly five) years to our present calendar date, plus what may be left of the forty years of Israel's present testing with the additional seven years of Daniel's seventieth week, and you have the year approximately 2000, forty times the Jubilee's fifty years.
To carry this thought a little further, the date (ordinarily) assigned by Ussher to Ex. 12:1, 2 is 1491 B.C. This date, like our own calendar, may not be exact. Ex. 12:2 tells us that the instituting of the Passover in Egypt was to be the beginning of months "to you." This took place about fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ. This would be thirty-five hundred years before 2000 A.D., a total of seventy Jubilees, again a significant number. Judging from its use in Scripture, the number seventy (seven times ten) indicates complete responsibility, especially in regard to Israel. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." Amos 3:2. Privilege and responsibility go together.
The appearance of the false Christ soon after the rising to power of the head of the revived Roman Empire, will encourage many of the Jews to return to their homeland, perhaps hurried on by economic and governmental pressure and/or collapse of some of the nations among whom the Jews are scattered.
A remnant among the Jewish people will, after the rapture of the genuine among the professing Church, go out preaching the gospel of the kingdom during the tribulation. Even the godly Jews of today have forgotten that during about the first seven years of the Church's existence, the testimony to salvation through a crucified and risen Christ was carried on by Jews only, and a few proselytes.