The Lord’s revelation to Ezra Thayer and Northrop Sweet contains several important statements about the current dispensation and its importance in the overall plan of salvation. The Lord refers to the time of the Restoration as the “eleventh hour” (D&C 33:3), a reference to the parable of the laborers found in Matthew 20:1–16. During the time in which the Savior lived, the first hour of the day was designated to begin at sunrise, or around six o’clock in the morning. The eleventh hour came at 5:00 p.m., near the end of the workday. In the parable, the Lord of the vineyard, who represents the Savior, finds a group of laborers still idle during the eleventh hour and recruits them to work in the vineyard. Even the laborers who work only during the last hour of the day received the same wages as those who labored all day.

By referencing this parable, the Lord communicates to these two disciples the urgency that must accompany the work of the last days. Only a few years after this revelation, the Church began to be called the Church of the Latter-day Saints, before it received its full and final name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (D&C 115:4). The Lord directly tells Ezra and Northrop that this is the last time He will call laborers into the vineyard, marking the time of the Restoration as the last great period of harvest before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The Lord has wisely withheld precise information about when the end times will occur; He is simply reminding his servants that it is soon and there is little time for hesitation.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland emphasized this point when he expounded on the parable of the laborer in an April 2012 general conference talk. Knowing that the time is getting late, as explained in this revelation and others, Elder Holland pleaded, “If you have made covenants, keep them. If you haven’t made them, make them. If you have made them and broken them, repent and repair them. It is never too late so long as the Master of the vineyard says there is time. Please listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit telling you right now, this very moment, that you should accept the atoning gift of the Lord Jesus Christ and enjoy the fellowship of His labor. Don’t delay. It’s getting late” (“The Laborers in the Vineyard,” April 2012 General Conference).

Just as the Lord admonished these two young missionaries to open their mouths and share the gospel, Ezra Thayer had been touched when he heard a missionary—Hyrum Smith—bear witness of the Book of Mormon. Before he joined the Church, Ezra had initially been skeptical and angry over several of his relatives investigating the new book of scripture. Despite his misgivings, Ezra traveled with his brother from their home in Auburn, New York, to the Smith farm near Palmyra, a distance of about twelve miles. They arrived to find a large crowd surrounding the Smith home, and Hyrum Smith speaking to the group (Matthew McBride, “Ezra Thayer: From Skeptic to Believer,” Revelations in Context, 2016).

Ezra’s heart was touched when he heard Hyrum share his testimony. He later said, “Every word touched me to the inmost soul. I thought every word was pointed to me. . . . The tears rolled down my cheeks, I was very proud and stubborn. There were many there who knew me. . . . I sat until I recovered myself before I dare look up.” When the meeting ended, Hyrum handed him a copy of the Book of Mormon. “I then opened the book, and I received a shock with such exquisite joy that no pen can write and no tongue can express,” he remembered. Ezra purchased the book for fourteen shillings, and, “I opened it again and I felt a double portion of the Spirit, that I did not know whether I was in the world or not. I felt as though I was truly in heaven.” When Martin Harris, who was also in attendance, shared his testimony of the book, Ezra told him that “he need not tell me that, for I knew that it is true as well as he” (Cook, Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 1985, 47–48).

The Lord’s counsel is particularly poignant here considering the eventual fate of Ezra Thayer and Northrop Sweet. The Lord counseled both men to build upon the rock of revelation, specifically asking them to stay true to the Articles and Covenants (D&C 20), the Book of Mormon, and the holy scriptures. Within a year of the revelation, however, Northrop was caught up in the first schism noted in the history of the Church. He followed a man named Wycam Clark who claimed to have received divine revelation that he was supposed to be the prophet of the Church. Clark’s small group, who called themselves The Pure Church of Christ, claimed that “they could carry the whole world with them by preaching ‘Mormon’ principles.” Apparently, the group held only two or three meetings before it dissolved. Apostle George A. Smith later commented that “the society would never have been known to the world, had not a few of us remembered the circumstances and told of it. . . . [It was] composed of six members . . . but that was the extent of the growth of this early schism” (Journal of Discourses, 7:114; 11:4).

Ezra Thayer stayed in the Church for over a decade but during that time experienced a number of challenges. He failed to fill a mission that he had been called to serve with Thomas B. Marsh (see D&C 52:22). He was later reproved by the Lord, who declared, “My servant Ezra must repent of his pride, and of his selfishness,” a reference to Ezra’s struggles to live the law of consecration (D&C 56:5, 8–10). Ezra later served on the high council at Adam-ondi-Ahman and then as a member of the Council of Fifty, an advisory group for Joseph Smith’s campaign for president. After the death of Joseph Smith, he chose not to follow the Twelve and affiliated with James J. Strang’s movement for a time. He was rebaptized in 1854 but failed to stay in the Church and instead joined the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1860 (“Ezra Thayer,” JSP). Jonathan Crosby, a missionary who stopped in Rochester, New York, where Ezra was living in 1842, later wrote that Ezra “treated us well, but was dead spiritually” (Jonathan Crosby Autobiography, 23–24).