Reddit reviews Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding

My personal take, derived from experience, is that God reveals to us what is necessary to get us to act, at that time, for the benefit of others and ourselves. Frequently that means that the impressions we initially receive seem false, or misleading, 'from a certain point of view'. But from God's point of view, we are given what is needed to act appropriately at the time; building to further revealed truths. And that is the greater truth.

Back to Joseph Smith then. Were his visions of the modern church incorrect? If your definition of incorrect is that his vision matched modern day reality, then yes, his visions were incorrect. But if your definition of incorrect is that his visions led him to do the wrong thing, then I don't at all believe that they were incorrect. I think he lived and died doing pretty much exactly what God had planned for him to do.

For example, I don't pretend to understand everything about polygamy. And I don't think Joseph Smith had an accurate view of what would happen in the future regarding polygamy either. But I very, very strongly believe that Joseph Smith was acting under divine guidance, and not to satisfy his own lust. And the available sound scholarship supports that.
Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding https://www.amazon.com/dp/1589587235/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_qpZJAb1W1B7H3

As for the fate of the church in the latter days? Again, I think Joseph Smith saw what was necessary to drive him to build the church, so that it would be ready to cross the plains under Brigham Young's leadership. Anything else is secondary to that truth.

I do think that Joseph Smith had a tendency to overshare his revelations though. I think that some things that were meant for him personally, to spur divinely sanctioned action, were sometimes stated as doctrine. Given the newness of prophecy in this dispensation, I forgive that error. It's an error that can be seen to diminish across prophets as the church has matured.

I recommend these sites regarding those questions, as each wife was situational and these go over each one:

http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/plural-wives-overview/

http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/common-questions/sexual-polyandry/

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Polygamy_book/Polyandry

The short answer is that some of them are undocumented and only speculated, all of them were eternity only sealings and not civil, nor sexual marriages, and the ones that were polyandrous were known and 'okayed' by the husbands.

The reasons seem to be because

1. Some of the women were married to husbands who weren't faithful LDS and they wanted to be sealed to someone who was and they believed that doing so would bring them blessings in the next life.
   
2. According to one of those sites 'the marriages could have been a way for Joseph to comply with the command to take plural wives in a manner that would be less painful for Emma. Plural marriages that didn’t include an earthly component (or were for eternity only) would presumably have been less bothersome to her'
   
3. to create eternal familial bonds.
   
   It is a very difficult subject to tackle, but there is a lot of info available on the subject. A lot of people recommend this book:
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smiths-Polygamy-Toward-Understanding/dp/1589587235/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448914331&sr=8-1&keywords=laura+hales