Where we are
If you've ever read Matthew 24 and come away confused about when Jesus is talking about — the fall of Jerusalem in his own century, or the end of the world thousands of years later — you are in good company. The chapter braids the two together so tightly that careful readers have argued for two thousand years over which verse means which. Joseph Smith—Matthew is the comb that untangles the braid.
It's a short text, a single chapter, taken from Joseph Smith's inspired translation of the Bible in 1831. But it does two large things. First, it reorders and clarifies the Olivet Discourse so that the prophecy of Jerusalem's destruction and the prophecy of the Second Coming stand apart and can be told one from the other. Second, it adds a handful of verses — about the gathering of the elect, the parable of the fig tree, and a striking promise about not being deceived — that change how the whole thing reads. This is the one book of the Pearl of Great Price that is purely interpretive: it doesn't give you a new revelation so much as restore the sense of an old one the centuries had tangled.
The two questions (verses 1–4)
It begins on the Mount of Olives. Jesus has just told the disciples that the temple — that gleaming, seemingly eternal thing — will be thrown down, "there shall not be left here one stone upon another" (v. 2). And the disciples ask him what amounts to two questions, which is the root of all the later confusion:
Tell us when shall these things be which thou hast said concerning the destruction of the temple, and the Jews; and what is the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? — Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:4
Two questions. When will the temple fall? And what is the sign of your coming and the end of the world? Those are separated by nearly two millennia — and the King James Matthew 24 answers them all mixed together, which is why it reads like a riddle. Joseph Smith—Matthew keeps them sorted. It walks through the first question — the destruction that would come on that generation, in AD 70, when Rome leveled Jerusalem — and then turns deliberately to the second, the signs of the last days. Once you see the seam, the chapter opens up.
The fall of Jerusalem (verses 5–21)
Jesus tells the disciples of his own day what to watch for: false Christs, wars and rumors of wars, the gospel preached "for a witness unto all nations" (v. 31), and then "the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem" (v. 12). And the instruction is urgent and practical — flee. "Then let them who are in Judea flee into the mountains" (v. 13); pray your flight isn't in winter or on the Sabbath. This is not poetry about the end of the world; it's an evacuation order for a real city about to be destroyed, and history records that the early Christians took it, fled to Pella across the Jordan, and survived the siege.
The Second Coming, and the gathering (verses 21–55)
Now the chapter pivots — clearly, in the restored text — to the second question, the last days and the coming of the Son of Man. And here Joseph Smith—Matthew adds and sharpens. The false Christs return, more dangerous now: "if it so be that they deceive the very elect" (v. 22). The sign in heaven, the sun darkened, the moon withholding her light, the stars falling (v. 33). And then the gathering:
And they shall gather together the remainder of his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. — Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:37
This is the great in-gathering that runs all through Jewish and Christian apocalyptic — the scattered covenant people drawn back together from the ends of the earth at the end of days. And the chapter gives the famous reassurance about timing, with the parable of the fig tree: "when the light beginneth to break forth… ye shall know that he is near, even at the doors" (v. 39). You won't be able to name the day — "of that day, and hour, no one knoweth" (v. 40) — but you can read the season the way you read a budding tree.
Then comes the verse that may be the most valuable thing the restoration adds to the whole discourse, the line that tells you what to do with all of it:
And whoso treasureth up my word, shall not be deceived. — Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:37
That's the answer to the entire anxious question of the last days. Twice the chapter warns that the deception will be so good it could fool "the very elect." How do you not get fooled? Not by cracking the timeline, not by date-setting, not by decoding the news — by treasuring up the word. The protection against last-days deception isn't superior information; it's a heart saturated with scripture, the Spirit's own training in telling the true voice from the counterfeit. The chapter that is most about cosmic catastrophe ends up handing you the quietest, most personal instruction: know the word so well that the counterfeit can't land.
The old books and the apocalyptic genre
I'll be plain about this book, because the honesty matters: Joseph Smith—Matthew is not a "couldn't have known" case. Its imagery — the abomination of desolation, the gathering of the elect from the four winds, the Son of Man on the clouds, the birth-pang signs — is shared openly with Daniel (canon), with 1 Enoch (which Joseph could read), and with the broader apocalyptic tradition. What Joseph Smith—Matthew contributes isn't a hidden parallel; it's clarity. It takes a discourse that the whole ancient apocalyptic world would have recognized and that centuries of Christians had scrambled, and it pulls the two questions apart so you can finally tell which sign belongs to which coming. Sometimes the restoration's gift isn't new information. It's the comb.
How this chapter changes the reader
Joseph Smith—Matthew does two things to a reader of the last days. First, it lowers the temperature on date-setting. The chapter is emphatic that no one knows the day or the hour, and it replaces clock-watching with season-reading — watch the fig tree, notice the light beginning to break, and otherwise stop trying to crack a code Jesus said is sealed. The last days are to be prepared for, not calculated.
And second, it tells you exactly how to keep your feet when the deception gets good enough to fool the elect. "Whoso treasureth up my word, shall not be deceived." That's it. Not a survival bunker, not a decoded timeline — a heart so full of the Lord's word that the counterfeit voice, however polished, simply doesn't sound right to you. The whole anxious sweep of wars and signs and falling stars resolves into one calm, doable instruction: know the word. The disciple who treasures it up will read the season clearly, refuse the false Christs, and look up — because "your redemption draweth nigh."