Thailand made the headlines in Europe earlier this month due to the impounding of the Thai Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn’s personal Boeing 737 jet by German authorities. It appears this was in reaction to an alleged non-payment by Thailand for a road construction contract fulfilled by a German company in the 1990s. This fracas is minor, however, compared to the tensions within Thailand that have rocked this once relatively peaceful Southeast Asian nation in recent times.

Last year, an army crackdown on demonstrators in Bangkok left 91 dead and 1,400 injured. Following a year’s hiatus, King Bhumibol dissolved parliament in May and announced a general election, which took place on July 3. The upshot is that the country has elected 44-year-old former businesswoman Yingluck Shinawatra as its first female prime minister. Her landslide victory is seen as a powerful endorsement of the protesters who clashed with police last year in efforts to force a change of government.

The 84-year-old monarch, King Bhumibol, has thus, once again, successfully navigated rough political waters amid concerns that his succession may become a divisive issue should national tensions resurface. Changes in the constitutional monarchy’s traditional balance of power could have far-reaching implications for its more than 65 million citizens in a post-Bhumibol Thailand. Of real concern is the apparent relative unpopularity of the crown prince as compared to his highly popular parents. One Asian source stated that “Vajiralongkorn, the crown prince, is regarded as erratic and virtually incapable of ruling” (Asia Sentinel, April 1, 2010). The Economist observed, “Behind the present unrest in Thailand lie far deeper fears about the royal succession. … Prince Vajiralongkorn is already widely loathed and feared. Most Thais try not even to think about his accession” (March 18, 2010).

King Bhumibol ascended to the Thai throne in 1946 and is now the longest continuously reigning monarch living today. Through the years the king has established many friendships internationally and worked with his wife, Queen Sirikit, in overtly and humbly serving the people of Thailand.

With a new government in power, Thais are hoping for peaceful progress in the ongoing development of their country. Yet conditions in Asia are far less stable today than in the time that an unofficial ambassador for world peace, the late Herbert W. Armstrong, developed a close friendship with the king and queen of Thailand.

Beginning in 1971, the Ambassador Foundation, of which Mr. Armstrong was founder and president, aided Thailand with successful humanitarian projects in the country’s hillsides in an effort to replace the hill people’s dependence on the opium poppy with a more profitable and less destructive crop.

During a visit in 1984, Mr. Armstrong traveled with the queen to a remote settlement near the Thai-Burma border. She was able to show him the advancements made from the settlement’s backward and unsettled existence to a more prosperous and stabilized standard of living under encouragement by the royal couple. Mr. Armstrong would later commission the Ambassador Foundation’s media department to produce a 60-minute video documentary titled More Than a Monarch, which recounted the king and queen’s passionate dedication to the service of their people.

Through the years, the Thai royal family honored Mr. Armstrong with decorations in recognition of and appreciation for his service to the people of Thailand and of his long friendship with its king and queen. Most notable of these awards was when in 1985 the king honored him with the Ratanaporn Class ii royal medal. That same year, Queen Sirikit also accepted an invitation to visit and tour the beautiful Ambassador College in Pasadena, California. While there she attended various banquets and receptions specially convened in her honor where both local and state dignitaries were present.

During one of these receptions, the queen made mention to those present, “So I think Mr. Armstrong and my husband have the same goal, the common goal—harmony, world harmony and better understanding between people all over the world.”

Coinciding with that visit, the largest collection of ancient and modern Thai artifacts ever displayed internationally was showcased in the lobby of Ambassador’s Hall of Administration. On March 25, 1985, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported, “Hundreds of members of Los Angeles’ Thai community converged Sunday afternoon on Pasadena to view a glistening display of royal art objects from Thailand and to catch a glimpse of Queen Sirikit, who is completing a three-city tour of the United States with her art collection. The queen, who took the exhibit to Ambassador College at the invitation of Worldwide Church of God founder Herbert Armstrong, told an audience of 1,250 people that many items in the collection represent her work with King Bhumibol to revive traditional Thai handicrafts. Their sale also can provide an alternative source of income for poverty-stricken farmers who otherwise may raise opium poppies for a living, unaware that it is used in illegal drugs, she said.”

During her speech delivered in the famed Ambassador Auditorium, the queen said, “I am very happy today to visit the home base of Mr. Armstrong … a gentleman whom I consider to be my true personal friend as well as a friend of all men of goodwill in this world. Because of his wisdom, far-sightedness and humanitarian heart he knows it is meaningless to talk about security, democracy and international cooperation when a large number of people still hardly have enough to keep body and soul together. I know that his financial aid to various projects has been extremely generous, but I think that he is most appreciated because of the spiritual impact he makes. To those who meet him he is the symbol of the warmhearted citizen of the advanced countries who is willing to understand, give encouragement and give a helping hand when needed.”

This enduring friendship of the king and queen with that unofficial ambassador for world peace, Herbert W. Armstrong, continued until his death in January 1986. During the final year of his long and productive life, Mr. Armstrong remembered Thailand’s first lady in his final book, Mystery of the Ages, where he wrote, “A royal queen on a recent six-day visit to the headquarters campus in Pasadena, California, on touring the campus, exclaimed, ‘I have just been in heaven.’ Three times this campus has won the award of being the most beautiful, best landscaped, and best maintained campus in the United States. These campuses are an example of what mankind should have done, and a modest foretaste of the beauty that will blossom forth over the whole Earth after Christ and His saints in His Kingdom are ruling the Earth in the wonderful World Tomorrow.”

In what Mr. Armstrong described as “a world of awesome progress and advancement, yet paradoxically of appalling evils,” the Thai royal couple shared a deep appreciation for the message emanating from this white-haired patriarch, a message of outflowing love and concern for the good and welfare of others. In fact, the way of life governed by God’s immutable and unchangeable law of love (1 John 5:3).

For over 21 years, our editor in chief, Gerald Flurry, has labored to continue the honored legacy of Herbert Armstrong. Through the print and online magazine the Trumpet, the Key of David television program, the educational institutions Herbert W. Armstrong College and Imperial Academy elementary school and also culturally through the concert series sponsored by the Armstrong International Cultural Foundation held at the breathtaking new Armstrong Auditorium. These initiatives are increasingly combining to perpetuate what Queen Sirikit acknowledged as the importance of, as she termed it, the “spiritual impact” and the “symbol of the warmhearted citizen of the advanced countries who is willing to understand, give encouragement and give a helping hand when needed.”

Since 1946 Thailand has benefited immeasurably and invaluably from the sacrifice and service of King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit. For 15 years the enduring friendship they had with that ambassador for world peace, Herbert Armstrong, gave them a powerful witness by word and deed of the gospel of the good news of the coming Kingdom of God (Matthew 24:14). Any change in Thailand’s constitutional monarchy may result in the loss of any residual impact of that legacy within its royal family and hence to the stability of that nation. For, in reality, peace and stability can only be brought to Thailand, as to all nations, by the institution of that way of life that Herbert Armstrong exemplified as ambassador for world peace, without portfolio, to so many nations, including Thailand, during his lifetime.