Mat 24:36 But of that day and hour knows no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

Alternative: But concerning that day and time, nobody will see, no, not heaven's messengers except my father alone.

This verse can be read as referring to the verse immediately before. In Mat 24:33, Christ says that people can see by the signs he mentions that they are at the end of an age. Here, he is saying that, though this world may be temporary, no one can say when it is over. This message applies as well both to the world as a whole and to any of our individual lives: we cannot know the time of our own deaths. This message about our not knowing who will live and who will die at the end of an age is a theme continued through many of the subsequent verses in this chapter. And the chapter gets very confusing if you don't realize what Christ saying here.

In this verse, Christ also echoes the ideas of lightness and dark, but in the larger sense of the seen and the hidden. Darkness is Christ's metaphor for human ignorance and refusing to see what is plain. However, what is hidden is different. These are things that God can see but no one else.

This ideas is "hidden" in the KJV (and every other major version) translation because the word translated as "knows" is eido, which is used in Mat 24:33 to refer to specifically what people can see. (See my analysis of that verse here). This word is used to specifically contrast what is seen and what is known. What people can "see" (eido) can lead to what they can know (gignôskô), but the two ideas are clearly separated in that prior verse. Why confuse them now, two verses later when Christ is trying to make the point that they are different?

This verse says that God intentionally hides the end point of our lives and of the world. God doesn't even tell his messengers because he doesn't want us to know. The specific reason for this is explained in upcoming verses, but by mentioning the fact that God's messages don't know makes it clear that this silence is intentional.

"Of" is from peri, which means "around," and "about," and specifically "concerning," and "about" with verbs relating to hearing, knowing, or speaking but meaning "approximately" when applied to numbers.

"See" is from eido, which means "to see," "to examine," and "to know."