The Messiah Complex

Yesterday's UN Security Council meeting on the Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian Question, was nuanced, informative and moving. I hold the diplomats at the United Nations in high regard. I also have great respect for the civil society representative - a fellow American - who briefed the council yesterday. If you have never listened to a full UN Security Council meeting on the Palestinian Question, let me suggest that this was one for the history books. The ceasefire, hostage release, and two-state negotiations are sensitive, alongside the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and I have to ask God whether there is anything I should be writing to change the existing state of play on these tracks: Full text of Witkoff's proposal for 60-day Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal | The Times of Israel PM said to principally back Witkoff outline; Hamas may okay it -- with reservations | The Times of Israel I will pray on whether it is my place to share anything more...

It's 9:40 AM Eastern Time on Wednesday morning and I am about to observe the 9923rd UN Security Council meeting here in New York on UN Web TV (cf.  The Middle East, including the Palestinian Question: Briefing and Consultations | What's In Blue | Security Council Report ). I have watched many UN Security Council meetings over the years, but this will be my first in a couple of months. While I am waiting for the meeting to start, this is a good opportunity for me to congratulate Mahmoud Daifallah Mahmoud Hmoud of Jordan, newly elected to serve as a judge on the International Court of Justice. He was elected without a single negative vote in either the Security Council or the General Assembly.

Colonialism, Explained  was recently brought to my attention by Pascal at Neutrality Studies . Now I am not sure whether to continue subscribing to Pascal's channel or to drop it altogether in my quest for greater geopolitical balance of opinion in a constructive UN Charter reform context. 

Thank you to the Albany Times Union for an affordable six-month Memorial Day 2025 special subscription offer. I am now signed up. As I think about President Trump laying a wreath in Arlington, I cannot help but recall two stories I read this morning on page A5 of the Times Union. They are both from the Associated Press: Crowd marks George Floyd murder anniversary and Israel's latest Gaza strikes kill 38, including children .  Digging deeper into the settler colonial counter-narrative, here is an image of the Wounded Knee Memorial: And here is the logo of the Native American Veterans Association: We remember all sides on Memorial Day in America. I am still somewhat confused by the distinction between intentional murder and unintentional murder as it applies in the case against Derek Chauvin. Furthermore, Chauvin was not charged with a hate crime. Does this mean that the unintentional police homicide of George Floyd had nothing to do with the victim being black, as far as the best ...

Welcome to the sixth Sunday of Easter at the start of week 22 in the year 2025.  Last Sunday I said I would define the "El problem" today. In the meantime, I have learned that the El problem (cf. Joshua 22:22) is a Saturday issue, not a Sunday issue. Specifically, it's an issue related to Saturn in kosher astrology circles. The journey of my doubt, reason, and faith in the resurrection of Jesus - literal and symbolic - is a Sunday issue.  And to the extent that every day on Earth is a new solar day, the journey of my faith in the resurrection of Jesus is also a daily concern. Every day sees a new birth of the Sun, and of all that is on the Earth beneath the Sun, just as every day presents our minds once again with the resurrection testimonies of the Apostles as maintained by the Church. In my forties I was an endurance runner who belonged to the church of the Sunday morning long run. Now I am in my fifties, I am on psychiatric medications, and I have fallen out of shape. ...

Wonderful work by Saudi Arabia and France at the UN yesterday with  Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution . Looking back on  The ICC and Israel: Jurisdiction Revisited , I see that I still have serious misgivings about A/RES/67/19. Nevertheless, I am willing to recognize the existence of Palestinian statehood since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, within borders to be determined through bilateral negotiations between Palestine and Israel, or by settlement of a contentious case between the two parties at the International Court of Justice. This said, even if President Trump shares my willingness, I am not sure he can acknowledge the legitimate statehood of Palestine since 1988 (at the earliest) on a grand strategic UN Security Council level unless and until all the members of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation recognize the legitimate statehood of Israel since 1948 (at ...

Subject to reflection and revision each Shabbat. Principle 1: I believe in one God - omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omnipresent. Principle 2: I believe this God has been made known to us in compelling and controversial ways by the descendants of Abraham, from whom we have received the Tanakh, the New Testament and the Quran. Principle 3. I believe these sacred scriptures, together with general revelation, point to a two-state covenant between God, Israeli Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and  the territory addressed by UN General Assembly Resolution 181. Principle 4. I believe Zionism will find its highest expression in compliance with a UN Charter that in turn honors the indispensable contributions of Israel, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to the advancement of world civilization. Principle 5. I believe in the Messianic potential of the first UN millennium. Principle 6. I believe in partial Mosaic authorship of the Torah, the inspiration of the UN...

It's very early in the AM on Friday and I am beginning to think about tomorrow's entry on Mosaic Authorship. But I am not quite there yet. I first need to double-check the Christian Zionist  Anglo-American  UN Charter Reform lens through which I am perceiving an interfaith dialogue between the God of the Torah and the Allah of the ICJ Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024. English is the first UN language in part, arguably, because of an Anglo-American guardianship role in God's plan for the evolution the United Nations Charter around a balanced solution to the questions of Jerusalem, Israel, Palestine, and the Third Temple of the Law. If the God of Abraham wants the Jews to return to Israel at the dawn of a Messianic United Nations Millennium to restore the Third Temple of the Law in Jerusalem, who are the UK and US to stand in the way of that? But if the God of Abraham also wants the ICJ Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 to be upheld, what then? Prime Minister Starmer and Presi...

I am going back and forth on Gideon's Chariots, defending Prime Minister Netanyahu and the IDF against the charge of genocidal intent, on one hand, while questioning the strategic wisdom of the operation, on the other. Yesterday, I suggested that Gideon's Chariots is a military necessity, in the continued absence of a Hamas surrender or a UN Security Council Chapter VII intervention. Today I want to probe this notion of military necessity. Does it hold up to third millennium Christian Zionist UN Charter engineering standards, or has Israel so fundamentally changed the contours of the seven-front conflict with Iran during the Swords of Iron phase, and has the international legal context evolved so much since the ICJ  Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024, and are the odds of live hostage rescue by military means so low, that Israel simply had and has no good military reason to break the latest ceasefire with Hamas? Does Gideon's Chariots lack military necessity under internationa...

The short answer is no, I don't think so, but the appearance of genocidal intent is now so powerful that Israel must prioritize an "8th front" media, diplomatic, and legal campaign to keep the truth of the matter front and center. Hamas is a genocidal antisemitic terrorist organization fighting in collaboration with an Iranian strategy to eliminate the world's one and only Jewish state, which Ayatollah Khamenei considers an apartheid settler colonial cancer in the Middle East. The Iranian strategy includes multiple proxy fronts and  a clandestine nuclear weapons program that is illegal under the NPT. The attack of 7 October 2023 was likely masterminded by Iran and precipitated by progress in Saudi normalization with Israel. At the level of grand strategy, the Iranian narrative is considered sympathetically by China and Russia on the UN Security Council, in opposition to America, France, and the UK. The UN General Assembly leans strongly toward the Chinese and Russian ...

I am not planning to read the book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, but I do want to use the occasion of its publication to share my prayers for Joe Biden and his family as they cope with a difficult diagnosis.  What is America's original sin? This is how Joe Biden put it in an August 2022 statement marking Slavery Remembrance Day: More than 400 years ago, twenty enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to the shores of what would become the United States. Millions more were stolen and sold in the centuries that followed, part of a system of slavery that is America’s original sin. Great nations don’t hide from their history. They acknowledge their past, both the triumphs and the tragedies. Today is a day to reflect on the terrible toll of slavery, and on our nation’s profound ability to heal and emerge stronger. Despite the horrors they faced, these men and women and their descendants have made countless contributions to the building of this nation and the continuous...

Before we look further at the Preamble to the UN Charter, we should take a few moments to consider the title. Does God want us to keep "United Nations" as the title of our world government, and should we continue to call its core document a "Charter," or should we call it a constitution? According to  Preparatory Years: UN Charter History | United Nations , "The name 'United Nations' was coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt" in 1942. I don't have any objection to continuing with this title through 2045 CE. The name may well hold far beyond 2045 CE, even in the context of greater world federalism. Perhaps it will hold all the way until 2945 CE.      Wikipedia presently defines the United Nations as "an intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among states, to promote in...

Here I am on the fifth Sunday of Easter at the start of week 21 in the year 2025, praying for guidance from God regarding the future of my Sunday blog series. I've only recently decided that my Sunday blog entries will be about my journey of faith in Jesus; that my Monday-Friday blog entries will be about my journey of faith in reform of the United Nations Charter; and that my Shabbat blog entries will be about my journey of faith in Zionism. How, within this structure, should I further organize my Sunday writing sessions?  Well, right now I am thinking deeply about El from a source critical perspective, and how this relates to my journey of faith in Jesus. I'd like to see if I can reach a preliminary solution to the "El problem" by the last Sunday in the second quarter of 2025. Then I will set a new goal for my Q3 Sunday series.  Next week I will define what I mean by the "El problem." ( On a side note, L is the 12th letter of the English alphabet and there...

Well, we have reached another Shabbat, the end of another week in our Zionist journey of faith. And the article that perfectly sums up how I am feeling at this juncture is  The Debate That Isn’t Happening: “Gideon’s Chariots” vs. the Egyptian Plan  by Ofer Guterman and Udi Dekel at the Institute for National Security Studies . Here is the abstract of this important policy briefing: The Israeli government has authorized the IDF to finalize preparations for “Gideon’s Chariots”—a plan to conquer the Gaza Strip and defeat Hamas, concentrate the population of the Strip in its southern region, and encourage emigration from it. The execution of this plan would come at a heavy cost: the killing of hostages and the loss of information regarding their whereabouts; additional casualties within the IDF; a decreasing likelihood of achieving normalization with Saudi Arabia; a deepening of internal divisions in Israel due to the expected military toll and the political tensions that would es...

I attended another very powerful MJTI PEP class with Rabbi Elliot Klayman yesterday (cf.  Pope Leo XIV's first Urbi et Orbi address and Apostolic Blessing ). Rabbi Elliot's masterful 4-week breakdown of the four chapters about Samson in the Book of Judges has revolved around Judges 14:4 and Hebrews 11:32-34. After showing how there is a bit of Samson in all of us, one of the many perceptive questions Rabbi Elliot asked us to think about is how we would counsel Samson. This Friday, as I sit down to write at 10:30 AM Eastern, I am thinking about the post-October 7 Samson that is found in every living member of the Jewish, Messianic Jewish, and Christian Zionist commonwealth worldwide. Does this inner Samson of ours express itself in anyone more iconically today than in Prime Minister Netanyahu? Whether you have agreed with him or disagreed with him on any or all of his post-October 7 judgment calls, Prime Minister Netanyahu is inarguably a Samson in the length of his service to ...

The official English translation of the UN Charter begins with seven words: "We the peoples of the United Nations." The Second Charter of the United Nations 2024/2025 proposes changing this to six words: "We the people of the world." In the language of the Global Governance Forum, this edit would probably fall somewhere between a legacy update and a normative change of the existing Charter. It does not seem to be a major structural reform - or is it perhaps the most important structural reform of the entire Second Charter? Unfortunately, the drafters of the Second Charter have not provided us with a rationale for their proposed update. Nevertheless, they have given us a timely and substantive benchmark for conversation. Here I will begin to discuss two possible edits. The first possible edit is from "We the peoples" to "We the people." The second possible edit is from "of the United Nations" to "of the world." Until I am abl...

In addition to the Simma Summa , I've just discovered what looks like a significant benchmark in the field of UN Charter reform. I am talking about A Second United Nations Charter: Modernizing the UN for a New Generation , published in September of 2024 for the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly by  the  Global Governance Forum  (cf.  Welcome to the Website of International Economist Augusto Lopez-Claros ). According to the Global Governance Forum website, In the past 12 months, a diverse and experienced cadre of individuals have taken it upon themselves to explore what Charter reform might entail and, in particular, what a new Charter could actually look like. What we have produced is at a minimum an invitation to a much-needed conversation about what a reformed Charter could contain to empower the UN to better confront the myriad challenges of the 21st century. This visionary civil society document powerfully affirms my faith that I am on the right t...

A quick review of Getting Started with UN Charter Research in the Charter of the United Nations (1945) Research Guide  (from the Research Guides at United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library)  confirms the importance of Simma's Summa in this field. Simma's Summa is my name for the article-by-article UN Charter reference work I introduced in yesterday's post:  Exploring My Doubt, Reason, and Faith in a Reforming UN Charter . Simma's Summa is written in English. There are six official languages of the UN: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. I am not sure if Simma's Summa is available in translation in the other five UN languages. This would be a question for UN librarians.

It's Wednesday morning and I am looking at my journey of doubt, reason, and faith through weekly time as having three main components: a Sunday beginning; a Monday-through-Friday middle; and a Saturday ending. The Sunday beginning is my doubt, reason, and faith in Jesus. The Monday-through-Friday middle is my doubt, reason, and faith in a reforming UN Charter. The Saturday ending is my doubt, reason, and faith in Zionism. Accompanying these three, I can firmly perceive a fourth dimension of doubt, reason, and faith with respect to my rule of life - the unique code of conduct, the particular personal vocation, through which the Holy Spirit is calling me to make my weekly journey. And so, this blog now has four simple labels: Sunday, Politics, Shabbat, and Rule. In one sense, we are all together on the Monday-through-Friday journey of UN confidence. In another sense, some of us are rocketing up the peak of UN confidence "Mount Stupid," some of us are plummeting into the UN ...