A word that is used to describe that which cannot be described in words is ineffable. Alma has had an experience that gave him pure understanding, and he is now attempting to put that experience and understanding into words. In some ways he finds the whole experience ineffable, in that he cannot seem to find the right ways to make his understanding clear. We have three verses where Alma repeats the same information in slightly different ways, and appears hesitant “whether it be at his resurrection or after, I do not say.”
This difficulty should not be seen as lack of understanding on Alma’s part, but rather a witness to the ineffability of the experience he has had. He has understood something of God, that appears to happen in God’s time, a time that we have already been told is different than our own. When Alma attempts to correlate what he understands on the level of God’s time in reference to earth-time-bound references, he has trouble being precise. The two time systems simply don’t match.
What Alma understands, however, is that regardless of the nature of the timing, the fact of the timing is that those who have waited the longest for their reuniting with a body will be among the first to receive it.