Free Will vs Predestination

About the Book

A little more than five hundred years ago, Martin Luther should have nailed ninety-six theses to the church door instead of only ninety-five. The ninety-sixth could have been about predestination, wherewith Luther could have prevented a schism developing in Protestantism over the Doctrine of Predestination. John Calvin, another Reformer who followed Luther quite a few years later, mistakenly taught that predestination, as described in the New Testament, applies to individuals instead of to the Christian Church as a whole. As a result, no one can choose eternal life or eternal damnation because every person has been predestined by God for one or the other. It is the church as a whole that was predestined by God ahead of time and not the individual. However, each individual can choose whether or not to join the church. This book shows Calvin’s mistake.

About the Author

Born in 1930s, Ted Johnstone, son of a country doctor, grew up on a farm near the small town of Hanford California. Ted was the third of four children, the eldest of whom was Dorothy, who had graduated from medical school and finished her internship just before their father's untimely death at age 56 in 1949. She took over the medical practice and Ted, at 17, took over the family farm, running the dairy, growing cotton, and attending school all at the same time. Six years later in 1955, he graduated from college with a B.A. degree with a major in chemistry and a minor in physics. Graduation from medical school occurred four years later in 1959, followed by a rotating internship. From there he joined his sister, Dorothy Johnstone Smith, M.D., in practice back in Hanford. Dorothy died unexpectedly in 1965. Ted and his wife Kitsy, then decided for him accept a position as a medical doctor overseas and she as a nurse. They served together in two countries, Nigeria and Ghana, for 18 months. Then Ted, Kitsy, and their four daughters returned to the U.S. and in 1968 settled in Madera California, where Ted went into private practice. Kitsy, after more training as a family nurse practitioner, later joined him in a practice limited to pediatrics. Ted is a member of the Fresno-Madera County Medical Society, and on the medical staff at Madera Community Hospital. All four daughters have college degrees and between them have four master degrees, one RN, and one PhD... They also have presented their parents with six wonderful grandchildren.