Raymond Cottrell

Raymond Forrest Cottrell (April 21, 1911, Los Angeles, California – January 12, 2003, Calimesa, California) was an Adventist theologian, missionary, teacher, writer and editor. He was an associate editor of both the Adventist Review (the church's official news magazine) and the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary. Raymond Cottrell, is seen by some as a "progressive Adventist", as he disagreed with certain traditional positions of the church, including the investigative judgment, and served in an editorial role for the independently owned and operated magazine Adventist Today. He was a consulting editor to Spectrum magazine, another independent Adventist paper, both which leaned to progressive Adventist viewpoints. He was the first Adventist to become a member of a scholarly theological society, and was instrumental in the founding of the Biblical Research Institute.

Personal life Raymond Cottrell was born on April 21, 1911, in Los Angeles, into a family which already had a long history within the Adventist church. His great-grandfather Roswell F. Cottrell was a Seventh Day Baptist who first listened to William Miller before 1844 and the Great Disappointment, yet did not become a follower. He became a Seventh-day Adventist in 1851.

Cottrell was married to Elizabeth (who was born May 20, 1912, in Phoenix, Arizona).

Career From 1930 to 1934 Cottrell worked as a church pastor in the Pacific Union Conference. now the Chinese Union Mission ) of the church as an administrator and educator, assisted in missionary work by his wife. The pair arrived in Takoma Park, Maryland, in late September 1952, and Cottrell began work on the Commentary on October 1. (Elizabeth worked in the Review Book Billing Department until her retirement in 1977. the third largest number of manuscript pages of any author. Yet including his editorial work he probably had more input than any other writer into the Commentary.

Articles written by Cottrell for the commentary included "The Role of Israel in Old Testament Prophecy" and others. In this article he wrote that the original subject of the Old Testament predictive prophecies was the nation of Israel, their fulfillment being conditional on the response of the Jewish people to the covenant and on accepting the Messiah. However, due to the "overriding pastoral concern" of Nichol, the editor-in-chief overruled the consensus of the other editors – one of only two or three occasions when he did so.

In 1957 Nichol invited him to be an associate editor of the Adventist Review, a position he held for 7 years.

He retired in 1977, to Calimesa, California. There he served at Loma Linda University as an adjunct faculty member of the religion department. As well as contributing articles, he was editor and had the title of editor emeritus for the remainder of his life. His paper deals with the history of the Adventist sanctuary doctrine and argues against William Miller's Biblical interpretation of the "2,300 evenings and mornings" of Daniel 8:14. Miller believed these were literal years, ending in 1844. The Adventist church adopted Miller's view and today forms part of its official beliefs. Cottrell's exegesis of Daniel contends that the historical Adventist sanctuary doctrine can not be sustained using any part of the book of Daniel; specifically Daniel 8:14. As such, this paper is as significant as the one presented by Dr. Desmond Ford at Glacier View; a paper which cost Dr. Ford his ministerial credentials. Christoffel in his own paper.

His wife Elizabeth died on August 2, 2002, in Calimesa. Cottrell has been said to have taken a few progressive positions. It has been argued that Cottrell's began to take more progressive viewpoints after retirement.