All Thy Waves and Billows
A few months before his death, I felt an urgent need to search for every available
Harald Bredesen sermon on audio cassette and digitize them for safe keeping. One
day, I came to him and said, "I was moving a sermon from audio tape to the
computer and happened to be listening while dubbing. It's fantastic. We should find
some way of making it available to people."
"Was it ‘All Thy Waves and Billows'?" Harald asked.
Late in life, when he no longer pastored a church, Harald mostly preached and re-preached a handful of sermons. But in 1977, the time of "All Thy Waves and
Billows," he was a pastor, preaching one to three new sermons every week. It still amazes me that out of sixty years of ministry and countless messages, he was able to guess which one I was talking about. It may tell us how important this message was to him.
No Time Like The Present
For me, this is one of those junctures in life when a remarkable number of people I
know are going through seasons of difficulty — in some cases severe, seemingly
catastrophic difficulty. "All Thy Waves . . ." was preached in 1977. It was a timely
sermon, not because it enumerated the troubles of the day, but because it held firm
to timeless verities. He preached it then . . . for such a time as this.
It's twenty-three minutes long and well worth every minute. It is typical of Harald
in two ways — it is not what you would expect and it is radically Christian.
Click here for "All Thy Waves and Billows"
A note about audio quality . . . 1977 to 2006 (when the sermon was digitized) is a
long time for an audio cassette, especially if it was never played and was stored in less than ideal conditions. Even in this digital age, there are limits to how much a recording can be cleaned up. Making things more difficult, was Harald himself. As
many a sound technician can testify, he was a speaker with a tremendous dynamic
range. His louds were very loud and his whispers barely registered. And in this
recording, he moved away from the microphone or at least turned his head from it,
a great deal. If you had to listen to the original recording even for a few seconds, you
would be glad for the removal of tape noise, but in that process, most of the
audience reactions have also disappeared. The sermon itself, though, comes out
remarkably well. It is easily understood. The quality may, in fact, be good enough to
take you back. You may feel like you're sitting at North County Christian Center in
San Marcos, California, circa 1977, listening to a 59 year old Harald Bredesen
preaching a classic sermon that resonates still.
May God bless the preaching of His word.
Click here for "All Thy Waves and Billows"
Posted: 5-09-2008
Note: At original posting, all links were active.
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