Death of King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV of Tonga
Reverend the Hon. Dr GORDON MOYES: On Sunday 10 September the King of Tonga died. I met him on several occasions. King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, 88, was the benign feudal ruler of Tonga, the South Pacific kingdom known as the Friendly Islands since the days of Captain James Cook. The King was the world’s only Methodist sovereign. He had great respect for Wesley Mission Sydney, the church home of Tongans who came to Australia. With a Pacific colleague I planted 11 congregations of Tongan people, numbering about 3,000. Once a Government official informed me the King wanted my advice on some matters. I pondered what the problems would be. I was surprised when the King asked me: Should he as a Christian offer an uninhabited island as a nuclear waste dump for Western countries? Should he allow an extension of the airport runway so 747s could land, knowing they would bring thousands of tourists, which would result in the sexual exploitation of young girls and boys from the sexual tourist trade? Would he permit Japanese long-line trawling in their waters, as that would decimate the population of porpoise? I realised what heavy responsibilities of decision-making he had, especially as he was the only university graduate in the Government of Tonga at that time.
The king was a jovial man-mountain of energy. He was 1.9 metres tall and at his peak weighed 220 kilograms. A servant carried into my office a wide stool for him to sit on rather than strain my chairs. Yet while at Newington College and the University of Sydney he was an outstanding athlete who set a new all-championship pole vault record and who loved surfing and diving. Captain Cook first visited the 150 islands of Tonga in the 1770s and since that time it has been a peaceful and politically stable nation. The king was the eldest son of the famous Queen Salote Tupou III. He was the forty-third generation of direct descendants of Aho’eitu, the first supreme ruler who lived in the tenth century. His great-great-great-grandfather, King George Tupou I, was the one who established the kingdom in 1845 with the help of Methodist missionaries, and the king and family have remained ardent Christians ever since.
Jesus Christ once spoke about Himself returning to earth. He said, “No one knows the day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, when the Son will come.” Jesus went on to explain that Christians should keep watch for His coming. I found an excellent example of this in the life of the king. I received a telephone call from the Protocol Department of the Australian Government in Canberra about a royal visit of the King and Queen of Tonga. At the last moment, the king had decided he wanted to spend the weekend with the Tongan people of Wesley Mission and so we would have a royal visit the following Saturday night with a concert, speeches of loyalty and a feast with dancing and choral singing—the only problem was that I had less than 24 hours to prepare for it!
I contacted the members of the Tongan congregation and they were overjoyed. They soon had the feast ready—the pigs roasted, and the watermelon and yams cut up—and the dancing prepared. It is customary in a village when the king comes for a special house to be built for him. How could we build a special house in our auditorium? It was done overnight! Hundreds of green palm branches were brought in, and layer upon layer of Tapa cloth arrived and covered the floor of the auditorium. The big wide stool was set in the centre, and all was ready for the coming of the king. The Australian police arrived, the security men went to their appointed positions, the Governor General’s Rolls Royce arrived, and the King and Queen of Tonga came in right on time. It was a wonderful weekend.
Afterwards I puzzled about how it had been possible to transform the auditorium and the theatre for the coming of the king in less than 24-hours notice. I found out from the people. They all said the same thing: “We keep special mats locked away at home in every village awaiting that day when the king would come. We always knew that one day he would come and we have been prepared ever since.” What a lesson! Christians know that they must be prepared for the coming of Jesus. In that regard we need to remember: Be prepared, rejoice, the King is coming! In my imagination last week I could picture the Tongan believers in heaven gathering around and singing as they do in their inimitable Pacific Island fashion. They would be singing to the tune, “The King is coming! The King is coming!” This week he came. 21 September 2006.
