1. “What will be the sign of your coming”?
   He is already present!
2. “Take heed that no one deceives you.”
   The greatest deceiver is my own faulty thinking, my unexamined beliefs.

Matthew 24:3-4

(3) Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (4) And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you….”

Claude.ai:

Your first reflection has more textual support than you might expect. The word translated “coming” is parousia, and its root meaning is “presence”: para (beside) plus ousia (being). It’s being-beside, being-there. In everyday Greek of the period it described the arrival or visit of a dignitary. The “arrival” sense comes from someone becoming present. Young’s Literal Translation renders verse 3 as “the sign of thy presence,” and a few other literal translations do the same. Matthew is the only Gospel writer who uses the word, and all four uses are in this chapter.

That makes the scene a little ironic. The disciples are sitting privately with him on the Mount of Olives and asking for a sign of his presence. Your “He is already present!” is close to what the Greek word itself says.

The second phrase rewards the same kind of attention. Jesus doesn’t start by answering “when.” He starts with blepete, “see,” “look,” “watch.” The first instruction is about how they see, not about the calendar. The verb for deceive, planaō, means to lead astray or cause to wander. It’s the root of “planet,” the “wanderer” among the stars. So “deception” here means drifting off course more than being tricked.

To be fair to the text, Matthew presents the danger as coming from outside. Mē tis, “that no one,” points to an agent, and the next verse names it: many will come in my name. But the same verb is used for self-deception elsewhere in the New Testament. 1 John 1:8 has heautous planōmen, “we lead ourselves astray,” and James 1:16 has mē planasthe, “don’t wander off.” Your reading also explains why the outside deceivers succeed. A false messiah only works on someone whose own unexamined expectations are already looking for one. The disciples’ question, which assumes the presence is somewhere in the future, is exactly that kind of opening.

A plainspoken rendering, if useful:

While he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately and asked, “Tell us — when will all this happen? What will show that you’re here, and that this age is wrapping up?” Jesus said, “Watch yourselves. Don’t let anyone lead you off track.”

“Wrapping up” is my attempt at synteleia tou aiōnos, the completion of an age. That’s quite different from the KJV’s “end of the world,” which has shaped the passage’s reception for four centuries.

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