Raymond Cottrell was born on April 21, 1911, in Los Angeles,[2] 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.
[2] From 1934 to 1941 he served in the China Division (which dissolved in 1952,[5] now the Chinese Union Mission [1]) of the church as an administrator and educator, assisted in missionary work by his wife.
[4] Following this appointment, Francis D. Nichol called him to the Review and Herald Publishing Association to commence work on the new Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary.
[6] The pair arrived in Takoma Park, Maryland, in late September 1952, and Cottrell began work on the Commentary on October 1.
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.
[7] Cottrell's critiques of the manuscript of Questions on Doctrine (published in 1957), were "mostly unheeded" by its authors and "might have prevented much of the upheaval that followed the publication of the book", according to Julius Nam.
[14] 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.
[2] Cottrell described the theological climate of the church as open, favourable and honest during the 1950s when the Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia was published.
He said of his "significant work" Eschatology of Daniel which was never formally published, "the manuscript awaits a climate of openness and objectivity in the church, which is essential to a fair examination of the facts.