After graduating from seminary, he served as a pastor in several churches before taking up an itinerant ministry throughout the USA.
He was called to serve as president of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1944, but the original urge to preach induced him to leave his college post in 1945.
He is best known for having authored a detailed refutation of "the false doctrine of limited atonement," and several other theological treatises.
He described himself as "a moderate Calvinist, a traditional Baptist, and a convinced premillennarian... but a lover of all the saints, whatever their classification may be".
Douty sold his collection of 4,000 books to Cornerstone University for $4500, payable in installments, giving the university's John C. Miller Library a substantial jump start.