The attempt to spray starting fluid into the intake may not be telling you anything, because you can easily spray too much fluid, flooding the engine, or spray it incorrectly, against the choke plate for example, and it just puddles up and runs out the intake. If the engine is already flooded, no amount of starting fluid will make it fire.
Check the timing. Rotate the engine by hand until the pointer on the front of the engine lines up with the notch in the crank pulley. Figure out which post on the distributor cap goes to the #1 cylinder (should be uppermost post on the right, facing towards the front of the tractor). Remove the distributor cap. The tang on the rotor should be right underneath the #1 post, or directly across from it. If it's not right under, rotate the engine 1 full revolution until the notch and pointer line up again. If it's still not right under that #1 post, the engine is out of time. Now you gotta figure out why.
Normally, the rotor tang should be pointing roughly in the 2 o'clock direction, as you face towards the front of the tractor. It can be made to run in many other directions, and somebody may have ignorantly rearranged things in the past to make it run rather than setting it up right. What's important is that the rotor tang is underneath the #1 post on the cap when the notch and pointer line up on the front engine pulley.
You may have the spark plug wires out of order.
The distributor may not be properly tightened to the engine, and could have slipped.
One or more gears between the crankshaft and distributor may have stripped or fallen out (sometimes major problem).
Facing the front of the tractor, the four posts on the distributor should go to the four cylinders as follows (IIRC):
3 1
4 2
#3 and #2 may be backwards, because I am going from memory here. The engine will fire and run like a John Deere if #3 and #2 are backwards, but it will run.
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