Dear Rabbi Silberberg,
I whole-heartedly agree with you. The Rebbe was a great man, and Chabad as a whole does great things with their ahavas yisroel and kiruv. The moshiach stuff doesn’t bother me, as even in the gemara there were tannaim and amoraim who were mistaken about the identity of moshiach. In Perek Chelek, four yeshivas each thought that there own Rebbe had the name of moshiach. It is good that we yearn for moshiach. The Rebbe certainly was big enough to have been moshiach if the generation had been worthy or the time had been right.
It is somewhat sad that the chassidim miss him so much that they have not appointed any successor. He was a gaon olam, and an oheiv yisroel. He never spoke bad about anybody else, and lived totally bpashtus. His over 100 sefarim are filled with amkus in nigleh and nistar. Nevertheless, we must make sure not to say or do things that could cause someone to lose his emunah. When a number of years ago, one Lubavitcher leader called a mass rally to say that the Rebbe was going to proclaim himself moshiach, the secular media came, and when nothing happened, it made everybody look very foolish. We need to be careful with things like that.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t take away from the gadlus of the Rebbe, ZTL, or with the goood things that the movement does as a whole.