On August 7, 2025, Kaniva News, a news service covering Tonga, a Polynesian nation, reported on the country’s public backlash over a Sunday rugby match—an incident that reveals the power of religious and political pressure to enforce Sunday rest. In Tonga, the push to conform to Sunday observance is fueled by a Christian fervor, as political and religious authorities unite to compel compliance. The outrage over playing sports on Sunday demonstrates how quickly apostate Christian standards can be weaponized against those who deviate from the majority’s “holy day.”
The Kaniva News published an article titled, “Respect our Holy Day! Tonga fans blast NZRL over Sabbath Game Scheduling,” and revealed the following:
• “Tongan fans are furious after rugby league officials scheduled their national team’s match against New Zealand on Sunday, November 2—a move seen as disregarding Tonga’s sacred Sabbath traditions.” [1]
• “The decision has sparked backlash, as Tonga’s Christian traditions strictly prohibit work, trade, and sports on Sundays, upholding the Biblical commandment to keep the day holy.” [1]
• “This comes after the Tongan government recently pledged stricter nationwide Sunday enforcement, reinforcing King Tupou VI’s recent reaffirmation of Sabbath observance as a core national value.” [1]
• “In 2003, Rev. Penisimani Fonua, then General Secretary of Tonga’s Free Wesleyan Church, publicly objected to the national rugby team’s scheduled Sunday World Cup match against Wales in Australia. Fonua emphasized that Tonga, as a devoutly Christian nation, observes Sunday as a holy day.” [1]
Tonga’s situation is a living illustration of how Sunday enforcement begins—small, local, and popular—before growing into a national and international mandate. History once again confirms that Sunday laws, once enacted, tend to tighten over time, especially when tied to national identity and moral revival. For Seventh-day Adventists, Tonga’s Sunday policies and public reaction stand as a reminder that the stage for the last-day conflict over worship and God’s law is already being set.
According to Revelation 13:11–17, civil authorities will eventually enforce Sunday sacredness as a national institution, making it a sign of loyalty to human tradition above the law of God. Tonga’s current policies reflect the very conditions described in prophecy. By declaring Sunday observance a “core national value” and defending it at the highest levels of government, Tonga has united church and state in a manner that Scripture identifies as a hallmark of the final crisis.
Under Emperor Constantine in A.D. 321, the first civil Sunday law was issued, prohibiting work on the “venerable day of the Sun.” In Colonial America during the 17th and 18th centuries, “blue laws” prohibited commerce and recreation on Sunday. The 1888 Blair Sunday Rest Bill, which also took place in the United States, proposed a national Sunday law that sought to protect this day on the basis of “public morality.” In each of these cases, Sunday laws began under the banner of public good or moral reform, but they ultimately led to the restriction of conscience through religious intolerance.
Tonga’s recent decision to uphold strict Sunday observance—banning work, trade, and sports on the first day of the week—serves as a striking reminder of what Scripture warns will unfold globally in the last days, with the United States taking the lead and influencing other nations to follow. What begins as a unifying measure to mandate Sunday rest by law inevitably leads to the union of church and state and the persecution of minorities.
“A great crisis awaits the people of God. Very soon our nation will attempt to enforce upon all the observance of the first day of the week as a sacred day. In doing this, they will not scruple to compel men against the voice of their own conscience to observe the day the nation declares to be the Sabbath. In view of this, there must be, among God’s commandment-keeping people, more spirituality and a deeper consecration to God, and a zeal in his work that has never yet been reached, to hold aloft the banner of God’s truth. The law of God, the only standard of righteousness, must be prized in proportion as the professed Christian world manifests contempt for it” (Review and Herald, December 11, 1888).
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Andy (or whoever might remember the church I am talking about),
I remember seeing a video testimony of an SDA church in the USA that had a big revival after cleaning up parks and throwing appreciation meals for the local police and fire workers… so much so that the testimony talked about people being turned away if they weren’t joining to assist in the work.
Anyone know what church I am talking about? I recently referred to the testimony but I can’t remember the church’s name/location, or the pastor’s for that matter, and Google isn’t doing me any favors.