Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists

Reformation in the sixteenth century. Its success
was a great blow to the authority and prestige of
the church of Rome. Through the Counter
Reformation the papacy carried on a bloody
struggle to crush the Reformation, but it gradually
lost the battle against the forces striving for civil
and religious freedom.
Finally, in 1798, 1260 years after A.D. 538, the
Roman Catholic Church received a deadly blow
(cf. Rev. 13:3).[9] The spectacular victories of
Napoleon's armies in Italy placed the pope at the
mercy of the French revolutionary government,
which saw the Roman religion as the irreconcilable
enemy of the Republic. The French government
directed Napoleon to take the pope prisoner. At his
orders General Berthier entered Rome and
proclaimed the political rule of the papacy at an
end. Taking the pope captive, Berthier carried him
off to France, where he died in exile.[10]
The overthrow of the papacy was the
culmination of a long series of events associated
with its progressive decline. That event marks the
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