Les Feldick Bible Studies

What Les Feldick Bible Studies Actually Is

The Feldick approach is verse-by-verse exposition. Les Feldick spent decades going through entire books of the Bible in a lecture format, not skipping hard passages or avoiding theological weight. You watch or listen to him read a verse, explain what it says in its immediate context, then connect it to what came before and what comes next. That is the method. I used this for about eight years. The first book I went through was Jeremiah. I had the DVD set loaded on my computer and a notebook. What actually surprised me was how mechanical it became. After about week three, my brain stopped trying to make it profound and just started tracking the structure. His repetition is deliberate. He will say the same point in three different ways because people process differently, and he is not trying to be clever about it.

Getting Started with Les Feldick Bible Studies

You can find most of his courses hosted on the feldick.org website, which is maintained by the ministry. There is also third-party hosting on YouTube and various archive sites, though the quality varies. I recommend sticking to the official source for completeness. Some courses were released as physical media first and later digitized, and the YouTube uploads sometimes skip chapters. Download or stream at your own pace. I burned his major OT courses onto DVD-R when they still sold on tape, but that is optional now. The files work fine played directly. If you are watching video, 1.25x speed covers it without losing substance. He speaks slowly by design, and the padding is where most people drift away. I keep a simple two-column setup. Left column gets the verse reference and a one-line summary. Right column tracks recurring themes. In Hosea, for example, I spent three sessions tracking the marriage metaphor before I saw how he tied it back to chapter one. Without notes, that connection vanishes by chapter eleven.

How It Actually Works in Practice

Feldick does not do side-by-side Greek and Hebrew word studies. He does grammatical-historical exposition with heavy emphasis on the original language sense, but he translates that into plain English for the listener. He references the original languages without requiring you to read them. This means his courses are accessible to someone who knows nothing about Koine, but it also means you are getting his interpretation of the translation choices, not doing the legwork yourself. His method follows a consistent pattern across all courses:

• Read the passage in full.
• Break it into literary units.
• Explain historical and cultural context.
• Draw out the theological meaning.
• Apply it practically.

The practical application part is where people either connect with it or bounce off it. Feldick is straightforward about morality and personal responsibility. He does not soften the text for modern sensibilities. That is intentional, and it works if that is what you want from a study guide. It is not a gentle approach. One thing beginners miss: Feldick assumes you have the Bible open. He references verse numbers constantly. If you do not have a physical copy or a reliable digital Bible on screen, you will lose track. I learned this during Zechariah, where he jumps between chapter 9 and 10 repeatedly. Missing those verses made the lecture nearly useless for about twenty minutes until I stopped trying to follow along without looking things up.

Common Pitfalls

The biggest issue is pacing. Feldick records were shot over many months, and some sessions run longer than others. A typical course has forty to sixty lessons. Each lesson is roughly thirty to forty-five minutes. A complete Old Testament course can run six hundred to nine hundred minutes of pure content. That is roughly fifteen to twenty hours depending on the book. Plan accordingly. Another problem is availability. Not every book of the Bible has a Feldick course. Major gaps exist in Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Nahum, and a few others. If you are trying to go through the entire Bible with his materials, you will hit dead spots around session thirty-eight in the Old Testament cycle. I filled some of those gaps with other teachers and just moved past the missing ones. It is easier than you might think. The audio quality on the older recordings is inconsistent. Some sessions sound like they were recorded in a hallway. The ministry has done some remastering, but a lot of early material still carries that sound. Using headphones helps significantly. Do not try to watch these on laptop speakers in a noisy room.

When This Method Falls Short

Feldick is not a source for deep lexical analysis. If you want to understand the exact semantic range of a Hebrew word, his courses will not give you that depth. He uses tools like Vine's Expository Dictionary and basic lexicons, but he does not walk through Strong's numbers or manuscript variants. For that you need separate resources. His theology is broadly conservative evangelical. He does not engage with progressive interpretations or historical-critical scholarship in a balanced way. If you are studying with people who hold different hermeneutical positions, Feldick's approach may create more friction than it resolves. He states his conclusions definitively, and there is little room for alternative readings within his format. For people with hearing difficulties, some sessions are tough. Feldick's voice is quiet at times, and background noise creeps into older tapes. I know this because my wife struggled through the Lamentations course and switched to a transcript-based approach, which is available for some courses on the official site. If you need transcripts, check the site first rather than assuming they exist.

A Realistic Workflow

Here is what actually works after running through this method consistently: Schedule two sessions per week. Each session takes about forty minutes. That gives you roughly one complete course every two to three months depending on length. Do not binge. The material sinks in slower when you try to consume it fast. Feldick's teaching builds cumulatively, and rushing creates gaps. Use a shared spreadsheet if you are in a group. I tracked which sessions we completed, which verses we skipped due to technical issues, and any cross-references Feldick mentioned that we wanted to research later. This took about ten minutes per week and prevented the group from losing momentum.

Pair Feldick with a quick reference tool. A basic study Bible like the ESV Study Bible or the NIV Zondervan Study Bible covers the contextual questions his courses raise. I do not recommend going deeper than that during the initial pass. Add commentaries only after you finish the course and want to revisit specific passages. The whole process from start to finish for a full Old Testament survey using Feldick's courses runs roughly eighteen to twenty-four months at a steady pace. That is longer than most people expect. It is also exactly long enough for the material to stick. Shorter timelines tend to produce surface-level familiarity without actual retention. If you are just starting, pick one book and commit to finishing it before moving to another. Half-finished Feldick courses accumulate faster than half-finished anything else, and they become demotivating rather than helpful. I have seen groups drop three or four courses mid-stream because no one established a clear finish line upfront.