Volume 45 | Number 2 | March–April 2017

Inglés Español

The Passing Away of a Dear Servant of God, Dr. Ronald J. Ausdenmoore


By Dr. H. T. Spence

Today we have assembled in the Whitefield Sanctuary to honor a dear man whose life has been part of the fabric woven by providence into this precious ministry known as Foundations. He was affectionately known among us as Dr. Ausdenmoore. Though he had been in declining health in the more recent years, his infirmities worsened in the last three weeks of his life, with God calling him home to heaven on March 23rd. The summons took place just before 5:00 AM that morning, some six hours before Dr. Robert and I left for Ghana, Africa. As the pastor of the dear Ausdenmoore family, I was requested by Sister Ausdenmoore to delay the funeral service until we returned from this mission trip. We were to arrive last night, certainly in time to share this important service with his dear wife, his sons and daughters, their families, friends, and acquaintances. But due to a most peculiar providence of plane mechanical failure in Accra, Ghana, our return was delayed 24 hours, which has found us still in flight during this appointed memorial service. Therefore, I send my message today for the Associate Pastor to read, as we reflect upon dear Dr. Ausdenmoore’s life and his home going, as well as to confirm his memory among us as one who loved his Lord. That love was poured out most preciously among us in the later years of his prime, as evidenced by his love of God’s Word and his faithfulness to the ministry he came to love.

We read from Hebrews 12:22–24: “But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels. To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.”

God’s appointment of his natural life on this earth was known among us as husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, a brother in Christ, a teacher, and a dear friend. In his early years, before he came among us, he was a man on a circuitous religious journey in search for the truth, a journey that took him down many paths in the context of public Christianity. His last few years before coming here were found in the Charismatic Movement, which brought many twists and turns in that contemporary context. After some years in his own struggles for truth, God moved in a mysterious way by bringing into his life, in the spring of 1981, a copy of our Founder’s book Charismatism: Awakening or Apostasy? This book so moved his heart, not only to see the error of the Charismatic Movement, but also to confirm to him and to his wife the very presupposition that he came to believe: that the Bible was to be their sufficient and constant guide.

As a younger man in those days, I remember my first meeting with him and his family in the summer of 1981, when he came with his family to meet my father in his study on campus. My father later told me that his meeting with Dr. Ausdenmoore and his family that day was filled with the questions, hopes, and concerns of a man in his own quest who had followed a most unique path. My father was impressed with the truth Dr. Ausdenmoore’s heart was coming to after a number of years being caught in a variety of theological systems. But the two were knit together in heart that day through a mutual hunger and desire for the Word of God. It seemed, during that time, that Dr. Ausdenmoore found a peace and rest that he had been longing for, and yet had not known how to find. Little did these two men imagine that day what God would bring forth in a most unique way to His glory and for the furtherance of the appointed vision for Foundations. But a season of time passed, and then in the year 1983, Dr. Ausdenmoore and his family began attending the Foundations Bible Collegiate Church. In the fall of the next year, Dr. Ausdenmoore commenced what resulted in many years of teaching in the Foundations Schools.

His teaching career among us began with the children, yet it was specifically in the growing area in those years of “special needs.” He was able to take children with physical, remedial, or mental needs and marvelously help them to improve in a most amazing way. Whatever the need was, this dear man was gifted to help the child. From speech impediments, slowness in learning, poor reading skills, an undisciplined mind, autism, all types of learning disabilities, and even immaturities that a child needed to grow out of, he had the patience, the persistence, and the insight to help the child. Out of these blessings came the desire of the Founder for a new school to be born, a school within the schools. It was to be called the Jacobus School. The Founder was strongly against the psychological and mental myths of our time, believing emphatically that modern psychology and clinical psychology were enemies to the Christian and that God’s Word was the answer to life’s problems and the need of a disciplined mind in Christ. Dr. Ausdenmoore had come to believe this as well, in the light of many years in the secularism of psychology. They both spent many hours discussing the problems of our time and believed the Jacobus school would be the antidote to so many growing problems among children. The school was named after the problematic patriarch Jacob, who had his own unique difficulties, many of which became the family sins spiritually inherited by his own children. How often the sins of the past leave deep scars and proclivities that need the healing of Christ and His Word, as was seen in Jacob and his offspring. The ensuing years of the Jacobus School brought forth much from the heart of Dr. Ausdenmoore in these areas for the Christian life.

We witnessed the wise investment of Dr. Ausdenmoore in Samuel Sanchez from Spain. This caused us to wonder in amazement of what could be accomplished with a severely handicapped child when his parents believed nothing could be done with such a child, even in the simple involvements of life. We also thank God for the blessings that came from the heart of this dear man contributing to the life of Ross Love. And there were others who were brought to sight and insight for living the natural life as well as the spiritual. Though Dr. Ausdenmoore saw the needs of the Jacobus principle in the physical and in the mental, he carefully saw that much of the failures in a child were a result of the spiritual deficits that only Christ could fulfill. He believed that the Lord was ever to be called into every aspect of the child’s life.

Though a full-time teacher, Dr. Ausdenmoore desired to accomplish an academic degree. In May of 1987, he graduated from the Foundations Theological Seminary with a Doctorate in Religious Education, becoming the leading voice in the remedial and special needs of the ministry.

But his contributions to this ministry rose to another pinnacle of blessing when the Founder unfolded in 1990 a monumental part of the Foundations Ministries that would become a concluding part of his life before his own death in the year 2000. It would be known as the vision for Anvil House, a special learning center that would tell the story of Biblical History, Church History, World History, and the Remnants of history. The Founder spent many hours speaking with Dr. Ausdenmoore about this far-reaching vision. The scope of its message would be far-reaching in the preservation of the truth of history for the Remnant. As the Founder would verbalize the details of the vision of Anvil House—from the sanctuary, to the Gothic Walk, and the Divinity Halls—it would be Dr. Ronald Ausdenmoore who transformed the verbal descriptions and brought visual reality to the hope of the Vision. His architectural and pictorial drawings of each part brought the vision of the Founder’s heart to the reality of natural sight, even before the reality of the building was underway.

As the conversations increased, and the building was undertaken by the brethren of this ministry, six years and ten months would see the reality of the visionary and the artist. This collaboration appointed by the Lord would truly bring into existence one of the most unusual and distinct learning centers in the world. I remember the days when problems would arise in the logistics of the building that revealed in Dr. Ausdenmoore great patience that was needed to resolve the matters and further the reality of the completion of Anvil House. It was evident that God brought him to the Kingdom for these important years of the Foundations Ministries, being an able contributor for the founding principles of the Vision to be handed over to the next generation. In many ways He became the providential artist of the prophet’s expressive heart.

But we must also acknowledge the mutual desire of contribution found in the heart of his dear wife, Sister Patricia Ausdenmoore, who gave many years as the librarian during a critical season in the growth of the Jones Library of the College and Seminary. Her honorable, steady persistence and patience in establishing the library became a complement to her husband’s desire for them to mutually become an integral part of the ministry they came to love and appreciate.

But rising above the tangible contributions to this ministry, and to God’s people and their children here at Foundations, we dare not permit these blessings to eclipse the heart’s desire of this man for his Lord and Saviour. He was ever weaving the natural principles of the Jacobus School into the needed spiritual principles that flowed from the Scriptures. His heart was to magnify His Saviour in all that He did. For His Saviour had done so much for him. He would often say that the greatest thing that God did for him in coming to the message at Foundations was the change that came into his life, the change which he had longed for to bring the balance of a life in Christ. He saw biblical principles beyond the simplicity of words to be taught. He saw them to be the very fabric of human existence, and becoming the outworking of a life in Christ and for Christ. The older he became in his walk with God, the more God’s Scriptures became his conversation in all the areas of life.

But the final years of this man’s sojourn on earth became, more and more, filled with infirmities, afflictions, and sufferings. God brought to him the unfolding reality of Ecclesiastes 12, the final, natural dissolution of the dust frame of man. It is interesting to observe that both he and the Founder, coming to the latter part of their lives, became what they desired to be included in the vision of the Foundations Ministries, which was the Jacobus Principle. As the patriarch Jacob found his family taking care of him amidst his afflictions at the end of life, family and friends now became to these two men the helpers for their physical distress, as life slowly brought them down to the dust of death. They in their own appointed time became the Jacobus personification, and what they did for others in a variety of ways, now became the needed outpouring upon them in this Jacobus School of life. I was amazed that the signs of life ebbing from each of them in the final days of their lives at their appointed time were peculiarly the same.

As our dear friend and relative, our brother in Christ, breathed his last breath on March 23rd, a little past 5:00 AM, he slipped through the thin veil that separates this life from the life to come. He now is experiencing what he hoped for; for faith has been turned to sight, and prayer has turned to eternal praise. His days of suffering have now ended. The conclusion of his life brought agonizing labor to execute even the simplicities of the natural life. But such labor has now been laid aside, as he has soared to the Mount Sion of heaven. Oh, dear people, what is to be found in that place? What is known by God’s redeemed people who have departed from this life? There is found the city of the living God; no sinners are to be found in that holy place. For God is the consuming reality of perpetual existence in that third heaven. There, in that holy place, filled with glory and grace, is found the heavenly Jerusalem that will be complete in all of its beauty and glory. There, in that place called heaven, is found an innumerable company of angels. There will never be another temptation from the prince of darkness and his cohort of demons; for heaven is the place of light, yea, an endless day. But also in this immeasurable home of glory is the general assembly and church of the firstborn. It is the gathering place of the redeemed! The gathering place of the Militant Church that becomes the Triumphant Church. There is no evil there, there is no apostate there; it is the home of the true Church of the Firstborn, who is Jesus Christ. There will only be one Judge there, and that Judge is God Himself! But what else is to be found in this place of glory? There is to be found there the spirits of Just men made perfect.

Yes, our dear friend and brother has gone to a place that is fairer than day, a place where all of God’s people throughout the ages have longed to go! It is to be the resolve of all they have hoped to be: it is the place where the spirits of Just men are, justified men, declared righteous by God! But there in the presence of God the spirits of just men will be made perfect. I believe this was the final, glorious hope of our brother in his quest for God and in God. That there will come the day when the spirits of God’s people will be made completely perfect. A place where they will love God with an unsinning heart! A place where all the weaknesses of humanity fall like shackles from the soul and spirit of the redeemed. It is the place where all we prayed for and hoped for become a reality as we will be resolved in the conformity of our Blessed Saviour. He truly will be our all in all for all eternity.

Today, our dear brother sees what we hope to see one day; he is hearing what we anticipate hearing one endless day; and he has entered into the perfect blessings that have been promised to every redeemed soul by God’s amazing grace. The Founder and his friend are now in the land of perfect rest, perfect sight, and perfect glory. A place that has been prepared for them.

May today we reflect upon our brother’s past, his final days of fellowshipping in the sufferings with His Saviour, IN the will of God, to bring the final conformity to His Beloved Lord. Let us live in Christ in such a way that we too will come to know what our dear friend has come to know in his Beloved Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

As these days pass into history and memory, our thoughts are immediately drawn to dear Sister Patricia Ausdenmoore.  She has been a true helpmeet and wife who endeavored to stay the course of life and love over the years, especially in the most recent years when the afflictions of life increased in her dear husband.  We immediately sensed in her heart an especial desire to do the will of God in behalf of her husband as his declining health increased.  Over these number of months her e-mails to her pastor, and at times the visits to his study, were clear indications that she desired the final steps of care for him to be ordered of the Lord.  During all of these many months of daily care for her husband, God has given to her the precious bonus of the constant assistance in love and care from her children and grandchildren that have only increased in these final weeks.  The decision to place him in a nursing home in the final days only came after prayer and counsel, and providence proved it was for the best.  We pray that her heart will be at rest in these matters in the days ahead.  Let us also pray that the God of all comfort will ever sustain her as she enters a new chapter in God’s will for her life.  The transition will not be easy after the many years of being married, and the more intense years of care that were upon her.  But we know the God of her own faith will sustain her.  As for the sons, Tom and Martin, and the dear daughters, Cathy, Mary, Jeanne, and Susan, we pray that God will bless the memories of what your father became in his quest for God and truth and that such thoughts will be the controlling memories of his life.  And to the grandchildren and great grandchildren, we remind you of the great legacy this man left for you to follow and to enter for your lives.  Who will pick up his mantle and carry on his burden for the infirmed and the weak?  We pray that there will be those of the third generation of his family to lay hold of this man’s vision for another generation. Though today we place our dear brother’s body in its appointed resting place of the Paracleft cemetery, behind the President with whom he labored both in heart and vision, we know our dear Dr. Ronald J. Ausdenmoore is present and accounted for among the spirits of the just men and women in heaven.  Yet in a few moments we will walk among the remains of those who have gone before us.  May their silent witness be the call to live for God in a day when truth is not accepted, and when the falling away has become the norm of Christianity.  We must ever rise to a life in Christ that is not encumbered by this world and its powers, so that one day we will rise to dwell with the Triune God, with the host of holy angels, and with all the spirits of just men and women, boys and girls, who have been made perfect by the blessed Saviour, who loved us and gave himself for us.

Let us pray.