An Outline of the Book of Daniel!

As you know, I’m in the process of taking a deep thematic dive into the book of Revelation. Part of that dive demands I investigate the book of Daniel. I’m looking at Daniel’s prophecy for two reasons. First of all, Daniel clearly interpreted his visions as applying to the latter days. As I began the study, I was already familiar with passages such as Daniel 2:27-28 and 10:12-14:

Daniel answered in the presence of the king, and said, “The secret which the king has demanded, the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, and the soothsayers cannot declare to the king. 28 But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these: . . .” (Daniel 2:27-28).

Then he said to me, “Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words. 13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia. 14 Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come” (Daniel 10:12-14).

However, as I began to look at verses that also included the word end, I was amazed! Here are a few such references.

• And the king appointed for them a daily provision of the king’s delicacies and of the wine which he drank, and three years of training for them, so that at the end of that time they might serve before the king (Daniel 1:5).

• And at the end of ten days their features appeared better and fatter in flesh than all the young men who ate the portion of the king’s delicacies (Daniel 1:15).

• Now at the end of the days, when the king had said that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 1:18).

• At the end of the twelve months he was walking about the royal palace of Babylon (Daniel 4:29).

• And at the end of the time I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me; and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever: For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation (Daniel 4:34).

• So he came near where I stood, and when he came I was afraid and fell on my face; but he said to me, “Understand, son of man, that the vision refers to the time of the end” (Daniel 8:17).

• And some of those of understanding shall fall, to refine them, purify them, and make them white, until the time of the end; because it is still for the appointed time (Daniel 11:35).

• “But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase” (Daniel 12:4).

As you can see, the end-times constitutes a major focus of the book of Daniel. Another reason I want to delve into the book of Daniel is because Yeshua quoted from the events of Daniel’s prophecy as He spoke of events which were to occur at the end of the age.

“Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), 16 “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house” (Matthew 24:15- 17).

Thus, it would only make sense that we allow Daniel to help us form our end-time paradigm. To that end, I have studied Daniel’s prophecy thematically and want to share the results so that you may be encouraged by the beauty of his prophecy.

In order to really understand any book of the Bible, you need to dedicate yourself to the study of that book. By dedicate, I mean you’ll need to commit some hours of intense study of the book! Needless to say, the Bible is the most awesome gift Adonai has given us! It is full of His wisdom. At the same time, we all know that it takes time and work to gain a proper Biblical understanding of any text. Therefore, go ahead and come to terms with the necessity of sacrificing some time and effort in studying the word of God. Once you make that commitment and follow through, you will be greatly rewarded, for Adonai has said you will find Him when you search with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:13). This dedication will manifest itself primarily in spending time reading, meditating, and studying the text. In order to really understand a text, you have to be intimately familiar with it. This does not mean you need to be any type of expert. You just need to spend some time to get to know the text. If you’ve made that commitment, then here’s one way you may go about understanding a Biblical text more intimately. One of the best ways of getting to know a text is through outlining. So here are some outlining guidelines followed by my outline of the book of Daniel.

Outlining Part I, Identifying the Major Topics/Subject Changes

Your first task in studying a book of the Bible is to get a complete overview of the entire book by outlining it. This will mean reading the book at least three times, but with different goals in mind each time you read. This week we’ll focus on the goal of the first reading.

Reading #1—The goal of your first reading of the book will be to outline its major themes/topics/event changes so you can see and understand the overall flow and topics in the book. For a book the size of the book of Daniel, this will probably take only about a week. Just read and outline a chapter or two daily—it’s easily doable. As you read, you should only be looking for major shifts in the themes/topics! For example, Daniel has 12 chapters. If you outline the major topics only, at a maximum there should probably be no more than about 12 major themes! Typically, the number of major themes in a book are less than the total chapters in the book. But I gave you that rule of thumb so you can have an idea of what I mean by only the major theme/topic/subject changes. Just look for major changes in the subject of the text and ignore the minutia of small details, because you only want to note major topic changes. Use Roman numerals for your major topic changes. Lastly, summarize each major section by an overall theme. You should be able to capture the overall theme of a passage in no more than 5-10 words! Here is an example of the major themes from the first few chapters of the book of Daniel. To my surprise, these first few chapters of Daniel have major topic changes that occur according to the chapter divisions. This is not always the case, but when it happens, it makes outlining easier. But, by all means, never expect this to be the norm!

Outlining Part II, Differentiation of the Major Themes

Reading #2—Your goal is to further analyze each of your major outline topics. You will need to do this for each major topic. This time, your goal is to find the next level of significant themes/topics/event changes within each major topic heading (without going into fine details). Let’s look at subdividing the third chapter of the book of Daniel. As I endeavored to break up Daniel 3:1-30 into its major subjects, I came up with the following divisions:

As you can see, this process of dividing the major topics into smaller topics is a good tool to help us organize our thoughts, visualize the flow of events, and better understand the themes presented in the book.

Outlining Part III, Completing the Outline

Reading #3—Now the goal is to complete your outline by further subdividing your second level outline where needed, filling in the finer details. Daniel 3:1-30 would look like this:

Here is what I have for the book of Daniel:

As you can see, once you’ve gone through this process, you will be very familiar with the contents of the book! Furthermore, your outline is an awesome resource. As you continue to study the book you can repeatedly refer to your outline to help you keep your thoughts organized.

The next step in a thematic study of a book is to study its thematic structure. That will be the topic of our next article in this series on Daniel.

Shalom,

TnT Robinson!