Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world, if we have an infinitely loving God? We can best understand this question when we look at the grand plan of our infinitely loving Heavenly Father. His course is “one eternal round.” (1 Nephi 10:19; Alma 7:20; 37:12; D&C 3:2; 35:1

My Journey

My life journey has been very dynamic, and I have learned some extremely important lessons on the way. Religion was not important to me while growing up, but I have always believed in God. In my teenage years, I had three special experiences that touched my soul.

I was not taught to pray or to read the scriptures. I don’t even remember a Bible or a Book of Mormon in the house. I read the book about the Bobbsey Twins.

One time I felt to pray and ask forgiveness for my sins. A wonderful peaceful spirit washed over me, and I felt truly forgiven. Another time I climbed Maple Mountain to commune with God up on Monument Peak. I felt His sweet Spirit there as well. When I had my bicycle accident and received a priesthood blessing and saw it manifest, that warmed my heart.

Going to Church

As a priest, I started going to priesthood meetings. When the Bishop asked me to give a talk, I was stumped and had no clue how to do it. When I stood up to talk at a fireside at my Uncle Leo and Aunt Nena Harmer’s, I felt totally unprepared, but the Spirit opened my mouth and words came out.  I came to know the reality of the Holy Ghost giving utterance.

I have already shared my experience with how the Lord helped me with my master’s thesis. But a few years later, just after I was asked to serve as Stake President, the bureau gives their senior scientists free physical exams. The doctor found an enlarged prostate. I called John Linford, who was a counselor to me, and asked if he would give me a blessing. He did, and it worked. THANK YOU LORD.

It Changed the World

Then in 1980, things were going poorly at the bureau with Division leadership management issues. I was thinking seriously about looking for another job. At that same time, they approached me and asked me to lead the time and frequency dissemination research group with three new people. At the same time, I was in charge of the atomic clock timekeeping group, which they wanted me to keep doing. Double the workload with no extra compensation. My first thoughts were, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Then I felt to ask the Lord. He gave me a download of experiments that I could do. One of them was to develop a GPS Common-view time-transfer special receiver. We did and it changed the world.

I shared the idea with NASA/JPL, who badly needed it for precisely timing their tracking of deep space vehicles like Voyager 2, which is still sending signals back.
NASA is still receiving signals from Voyager 2. As of February 2025, Voyager 2 is more than 14 billion miles (about 23 billion kilometers) away from Earth and continues to send data back, albeit at a very low rate. It is currently in interstellar space, far beyond the influence of our Sun’s gravity.

Due to its extreme distance, the signal from Voyager 2 takes over 18 hours to reach Earth, which means NASA has to wait that long for any communication. The spacecraft is still operating with limited power and its instruments are being turned off periodically to conserve energy. But it’s remarkable that it’s still functional and providing valuable data after more than 47 years in space!

The signal is expected to continue for a few more years, but the spacecraft’s power supply will eventually run out in the next couple of years. JPL gave us, the bureau, a quarter of a million dollars to develop that receiver to help track their spacecraft. The international timing community picked up on it in a major way, and I put one at Arecibo Observatory for doing millisecond pulsar timing. I was made chairman of a “Millisecond pulsar sub-committee” for the International Astronomical Union, as a result of my findings—discovering PSR B1937+21 to be binary and using the Allan variance showed that the electron content along the signal path is a random walk process. It takes about 12 thousand years for the signal to reach the Earth.

Stress Is A Killer

Over the years, I have learned that stress is a killer. Sunday evening, 31 July 2016, I was conversing with Sterling. He knows how to push my buttons, and I had a horrible night. I woke up the next morning with a heart attack. That Tuesday, I went through quadruple bypass surgery.

I asked for a priesthood blessing at the hospital in Nephi, before they took me by ambulance to Utah Valley Hospital. I felt as calm as could be about what would happen. I had a great visit with the person attending me in the back of the ambulance—sharing all kinds of fun information, while they were driving 90 mph to get there as fast as possible.
That fall, I was invited to receive the highest award given by the IEEE/UFFC community, in New Orleans at the annual International Frequency Control Symposium, and they also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the publication of my master’s thesis. I was there with my Sweetheart.

Ingor Blinov is the same gentleman who gave me the award in Suzdal, Russia, in 2014.
They also asked me to chair a session, specifically about the Allan variance and its usefulness.

They also shared a special periodical publication written by 16 different people across the globe sharing the usefulness of the Allan variance. It was a very enjoyable time. IT’S ABOUT TIME. We sold a ton of books while there. I am still learning how to deal with the killer stress.

Believe in Miracles

In 2018, I was notified that I had received the coveted Keithley Award and received $10k, which I gave to the Church. I was invited to give a talk in Houston at an international metrology conference. My talk was to be given Wednesday morning the 18th of April. That Monday morning while walking out to the truck to drive to the airport in SLC, I dropped my keys. Fortunately, Natalie Wright was there, and she asked, ”Are you all right?” I was suffering from a stroke. She called Kevin, and he came over. With his training, he immediately recognized the systems of a stroke and suggested we call the ambulance. He then asked if I wanted a priesthood blessing. I, of course, said yes. After the blessing, I said, I’m okay. I am going to Houston.

I drove to the airport and flew on to Houston, but I could definitely tell something was not right. That evening, I walked to a restaurant for dinner about a half mile. On the way back my one leg was acting funny. When I got back to the hotel. I couldn’t speak. I went to the concierge, and he could tell I was having another stroke. They immediately called an ambulance. The hospital in Houston was first class. When the therapist checked me in the morning, she asked me to share all the words I could starting with F. I said, “Frog.” And I was done. I had had another stroke that morning, as I was talking some earlier that morning.

Karie, bless her heart, flew down. The people at the conference and at the hotel were most understanding and kind. Nathan called the local bishop and asked if someone could go and give me a priesthood blessing. That afternoon, the Elders showed up and gave me a precious blessing. We let the conference people know I would be there for my talk. The hotel gave Karie a free room.

The next morning to an international audience I said, “I don’t know how many of you believe in miracles, but we just had one.” And I explained my situation. I gave an hour and ten-minute talk—sharing my work. Karie made tons of friends, and we sold two cases of books. AGAIN, THANK YOU, LORD.

I had another stroke a few years ago while riding my bike. I was on my way home, and road  my bike off into the weeds and fell over. Bodie Wright was across the street and immediately came over to help me get back up. Again, with another priesthood blessing, I am on my way and riding my bike nearly every day now.

Why So Much Pain and Suffering

Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world, if we have an infinitely loving God? Why did His Son have to suffer more than was humanly possible, as He brought about the infinite atonement? We have the Apostle John’s profound and most popular Christian statement, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
But that statement begs the question. We can best understand and answer these questions and why the purging is necessary before Christ comes again when we look at the grand plan of our infinitely loving Heavenly Father. His course is “one eternal round.” (1 Nephi 10:19; Alma 7:20; 37:12; D&C 3:2; 35:

Plan of Happiness

His perfect plan of happiness is a grand chiasmus, as with the figure at the top: A-B-C-B’-A’. A, the Earth was created nigh unto Kolob; B, then came the “Garden of Eden” for Adam and Eve; C, then the Fall of Adam and Eve brought us to where we are now; B’, then the Earth moves to its millennial epoch; A’, finally, the Savior presents to the Father His kingdom into Celestial realms of glory. So “one eternal round” is celestial, terrestrial, celestial, terrestrial, and celestial, as shown in the depiction.

Similarly, we can think of three kinds of people: celestial, terrestrial, and telestial. The celestial folks are motivated by the pure love of Christ. The terrestrial people are the good and honorable motivated out of duty. The telestial are worldly and selfish, and allow Satan and his angels to motivate their doings. They are often lustful as well and pornography often entraps them.

As a praying physicist, I have given you proof that the Book of Mormon is the word of God in many ways. I am pleased that LDS Living picked up on this insight. But as we look directly at the history of how the first 5,000 copies came to be typed set and printed, we see the hand of the Lord. It was done in the Lord’s compressed timeframe of six months, when it has been shown that it should have taken at least 17 ½ months.

The Lords Fingerprint

I have also given you proof of the Lord’s fingerprint in all of our scriptures with the 1,800 phrases tying back to the language of Adam.  Knowing these things, we learn from Lehi, as he blesses his son Jacob, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must need to be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must need to remain as dead, having no life neither death nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.” (2 Nephi 2:11)

We also know as righteous King Benjamin stated just before he died, “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” (Mosiah 3:19)

Why God Allows Evil

In dealing with this very difficult question, “Why would a God who is good create evil? I pull from my first book, It’s About Time:

2.3 Why Does God—Who Is Good—Create Evil? From Isaiah:

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” — Isaiah 45:7

How and why does the Lord create evil or allow it? Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? The great thinkers of the ages have never come up with the answers to these
questions. C. S. Lewis, after going through his own apostasy from Christianity, may have come the closest—becoming one of Christianity’s most avid advocates. During his
teenage and apostate years, he felt that the strongest force for atheism was expressed in a poem by Lucretius:
Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.
Lucr. 5.198-199)

After J. R. R. Tolkien and others of his friends persuaded Lewis to deeply consider Christianity, it turned his life around. As he considered Christ, Lewis concluded that “only two of this man are possible. Either He was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was, and is, precisely what He said. There is no middle way.”20

After gaining his deep appreciation for Christianity, regarding evil, pain, and suffering that comes with life, Lewis poignantly states that if you “try to exclude the possibility of suffering the order of nature and the existence of free will involve,. . . you find that you have excluded life itself.”

Great Thinkers

Albert Schweitzer—considered by some to be the greatest humanitarian and one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century—was a devout student of the teachings of Jesus. He mastered philosophy, music, theology, and medicine, and became the world’s authority on Bach’s timeless organ music, and he also could build an organ. His great intellect and all his learning led him to what he called “Reverence for Life,” which included all life. He built a hospital in Africa to relieve suffering there and had great success in doing so. He dealt with both world wars and wrote much about the wars. From 1945 to 1950,  Schweitzer was considered the greatest man in the world.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize. He had then and still has a great influence on philosophy and thinking in the world. In all of his eighty years of learning, Dr. Schweitzer could not answer the “great question: What is the meaning of evil in the world?” And “in what way is our existence transitory and yet eternal?”   He left these questions unanswered, but because he knew of God’s love he focused his life on loving by relieving the sufferings of others.

Herman Melville had similar questions, “How can a God that is good create evil?” He wrote his classic book Moby-Dick; trying to deal with this question. In the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám—this great Persian thinker, Omar Khayyám—struggled with such questions and after listening to the world’s philosophers discuss these questions, he said, ”I went out by the same door wherein I went.”23

The questions remained unanswered.

20) C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pp 13-14
21) C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pp 13-14
22) Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought
23) The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Joseph Smith (1805-1834) with only a third-grade education was taught by God, as part of the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Joseph was raised up as a prophet of God to restore the following truths that had been lost during the dark ages. The following Truths were revealed to him, as a modern prophet, in answer to the following challenging questions:

Who Are We?

Where did we come from?
What is our purpose in life?
Where do we go after death?
Why does God allow evil in the world?

None of the great thinkers, including Lewis, give in-depth answers to these questions, which are gloriously now available to us through the restoration of these truths through the Prophet Joseph Smith. depth answers to these questions, which are gloriously now available to us through the 
restoration of these truths through the Prophet Joseph Smith.  This latter-day restoration is called the Last dispensation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the dispensation of the fullness of times.

The Apostle Paul spoke of it, “That in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:” (Ephesians 1:10)

The Apostle Paul spoke of it, “That in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in him” (Ephesians 1:10)

Agency

Agency led to the fall of Adam and Eve and thence to life’s challenges, including sin, pain, and suffering. Ironically, the fall is a major and necessary step in the Father’s perfect plan of happiness. After the fall, Eve was glad and in rejoicing responded:  “Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.” (Moses 5:11)

Their fall opened the door for Father’s spirit offspring, which includes everyone who has lived or will live on the Earth, to gain a physical body and life experiences.
The Apostle Paul so aptly said that “…the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”26

The evil in the world has led many to doubt God’s existence; it is one of those doctrines not understood or appreciated by the natural man or woman, as mentioned by Paul. Even though this doctrine has been brought into light and understanding through the restoration of the fullness of the gospel, much of it is taught in the Bible.  Another of the grand ironies of the universe—perfectly exemplified by our Savior—is that when people surrender their will to the will of the Father, then they can be totally free. As our Redeemer so succinctly said, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:36)
24) John 8:32
25) John 14:6
26) 1 Cor. 2:14

Reasons for Challenges

Neal A. Maxwell (1926-2004) was one of the recent modern apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which church was restored through the instrumentality of the Prophet Joseph Smith. The Church was organized with twelve apostles, as it was in the meridian of time. Maxwell profoundly commented that there are three reasons for life’s challenges: (1) a natural consequence of mortality; (2) the sins or mistakes people make; and, (3) those trials have been given by a loving Lord for our growth and benefit, from my notes from a General Conference talk.

It may seem odd to thank the Lord for the chastisements and challenges in addition to our uncountable blessings, but they all have a divine purpose. When difficult times come, they will ask the Lord what lessons He wants us to learn, because these experiences are always for eternal good if viewed through divine eyes, as hard as some of them may seem.
44) John 8:32, 36
45) 1 Kings 19:12; 1 Nephi 17:45
46) 2 Nephi 32:2-5; Moroni 7:27-32; Moses 1:39
47)  Doctrine and Covenants 121:45-46
48) 2 Nephi 2:8, 26-27
49) Matt. 11:28-30

The Millennium

In my second book, Time & Eternity, the End-Times & Beyond Revealed, I share the important truth that all who accept Christ and live His teachings will make it into the Millennium regardless of religion. Everyone is born with the Spirit of Christ to know good from evil. (John 1:9) By following our conscience to do good, everyone is given the opportunity in this life to accept Jesus whether they are Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, agnostic, atheist,

Following His light leads us there. “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

Then the Apostle Peter gives this great warning: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.” (Acts 3:19-23

When Moroni first appeared to Joseph Smith, he offered a similar warning: “He quoted also the third chapter of Acts, twenty-second and twenty-third verses, precisely as they stand in our New Testament. He said that that prophet was Christ; but the day had not yet come when ‘they who would not hear his voice should be cut off from among the people,’ but soon would come.” (JS-H 40)

Nephi, in sharing about our day and time, makes it very clear: “And the Lord will surely prepare a way for his people, unto the fulfilling of the words of Moses, which he spake, saying: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, like unto me; Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that all those who will not hear that prophet shall be cut off from among the people. And now I, Nephi, declare unto you, that this prophet of whom Moses spake was the Holy One of Israel; wherefore, he shall execute judgment in righteousness.” (1 Nephi 22:20-21)

So we see that the purging ahead is because all those telestial-minded people have chosen to reject  Christ and His teachings. In due process, they will be “cut off” from among the people before His Second Coming. In the perfect fairness of God, after suffering for their sins for a thousand years, they will be allowed to come to Christ. And most of them will and gratefully so—knowing that the telestial kingdom is a degree of glory greater than we can comprehend. “And again, we saw the glory of the telestial, which glory is that of the lesser, even as the glory of the stars differs from that of the glory of the moon in the firmament. These are they who received not the gospel of Christ, nor the testimony of Jesus. And thus we saw, in the heavenly vision, the glory of the telestial, which surpasses all understanding;” (D&C 76:81, 82, 89)

Perfect Plan of Happiness

In the Lord’s perfect plan of happiness, He honors the desires of our hearts. Alma says it well: “I ought not to harrow up in my desires the firm decree of a just God, for I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life; yea, I know that he allotteth unto men, yea, decreeth unto them decrees which are unalterable, according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction. Yea, and I know that good and evil have come before all men; he that knoweth not good from evil is blameless; but he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires, whether he desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience. For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have; therefore we see that the Lord doth counsel in wisdom, according to that which is just and true.” (Alma 29:4, 5, 8)

In the perfect fairness of our infinitely loving God, everyone will see that the purging ahead was not only needed but will rejoice in the blessings of the infinite atonement:

God will force no one to Heaven; to do so it would not be Heaven.

David W. Allan (10 February 2025)

Photo: David W. Allan