Jacobs was not merely referring to objects associated with contemporary interpretations of Wiccan practice, or with Satanic ritual. Cindy Jacobs and her colleagues, Peter Wagner, Ed Silvoso, and others in the New Apostolic movement cast their net of purported "witchcraft" and "idolatry" over objects associated with major world religious traditions such as Catholicism, Mormonism, and all Eastern religions, and also many native art objects.

So much to burn, so little time, and the imperative may have global consequences. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, the Third Wave tendency in charismatic evangelical Christianity from which the New Apostolic movement is now coalescing encompassed, by AD 2000, almost 300 million Christians worldwide. Now, stresses Peter Wagner, it's bigger.

[video, below: Hawaii Lt. Governor Duke Aoina says, July 2008, that he's a part of Transformation Hawaii, and Cindy Jacobs calls on pastors to tell their church members to bring in "witchcraft items" to be burned]

As Cindy Jacobs wrote in her book Deliver Us from Evil (Regal Books, from Gospel Light, 2001),

"There are certain occult items were are not to possess. If we own any of the following objects we need to get rid of them. If the object was at any time worshiped as a god or used in the worship of a false god, then we should burn it or otherwise destroy it.
   It is not unusual for tourists to bring home keepsakes from faraway lands that have demonic attachments or are idols. What we often do not realize is that these objects can curse us. For instance, many people purchase African masks that have been used in worship ceremonies. Others buy native art such as Kachina dolls, statues of Hindu gods and statues of Buddha. Back home, havoc starts to reign in the form of sickness, tragedy, depression of marriage break-ups. Usually the person does not know why these things have happened." (Deliver Us from Evil, pp. 223-224)

Jacobs went on to describe an alleged, contemporary religiously-motivated destruction of native art in the U.S. state of Hawaii:

"Pastor Jim Marocco... planted a church on the island of Maui. He had people bring and burn occult items, specifically objects that were worshiped as part of their native religions. After the objects were destroyed, his church experienced great growth." (Deliver Us from Evil, page 225)

Cindy Jacobs then proceeds to give an account extremely similar to that offered, below, from C. Peter Wagner, on a mass-burning of allegedly "occult" items that Jacobs, Wagner, and Ed Silvoso helped orchestrate in 1990 in the Argentine city of Resistencia. As Peter Wagner wrote in his book Hard-Core Idolatry - Facing the Facts,

 

"Burn The Idols!
Doris was preparing to travel to Argentina with Cindy Jacobs for the climactic evangelistic campaign. As she was reading scripture the morning she was to leave, the Holy Spirit told her that in Resistencia they must burn the idols, like the magicians did in Ephesus. Ed Silvoso, Cindy Jacob and the Resistencia pastors agreed. So the evening before the evangelistic crusade, all the city's believers came together for prayer. The leaders explained how important it would be to do spiritual housecleaning in their homes before they came to the meeting. They began mentioning the kinds of material things that might be bringing honor to the spirits of darkness; pictures, statues, Catholic saints, Books of Mormon, pictures of former lovers, pornographic material, fetishes, drugs, Ouija boards, zodiac charms, good luck symbols, crystals for healing, amulets, talismans, tarot cards, witch dolls, voodoo items, love potions, books of magic, totem poles, certain pieces of jewelry, objects of Freemasonry, horoscopes gargoyles, native art, foreign souvenirs, and what have you.

The believers agreed to obey God and to cleanse their homes, even if it meant giving up what might have been expensive items. They were to wrap each item in newspaper to protect privacy, and then cast the objects into a 55-gallon drum set before the platform the following night. The drum was heaped to overflowing! They poured gasoline on it and set it on fire." - C. Peter Wagner, Hard-Core Idolatry - Facing the Facts, 1999, Wagner Institute of Practical Ministry

For those unfamiliar with their movement, C. Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs, and Ed Silvoso are three of the leading figures in the creation of what Wagner has dubbed the New Apostolic Reformation (sometimes also called the Apostolic and Prophetic movement or the Third Wave of the Holy Spirit.)

The most important crucible for the distinctive ideas and practices of their movement was the Argentine city of Resistencia, where beginning in 1990 according to Wagner, Prayer Evangelism and Spiritual Mapping were first tried on a mass scale (for an explanation of these terms, see Rene' Holvast's 2005 doctoral dissertation for the University of Utrecht, Spiritual Mapping: The Turbulent Career of a Contested American Paradigm [PDF file link], reworked and republished in late 2008 as a book, from Brill academic publishers.)

The mass-burning of allegedly evil objects Wagner describes was an attempt to break the powers of evil that had supposedly become entrenched in Resistencia. It is characteristic of the movement that religious items associated with major world religions such as Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam are lumped together with "pornography", "drugs," and faddish commercialized occult objects such as Ouija Boards.

The inherent disrespect of world religious traditions, some going back thousands of years, is intrinsic to the basic outlook of Wagner et. al - there can be only one truth, one correct belief system, and all pretense otherwise is mere compromise.

What's so striking about this outlook is that it extends even to native art objects. One would have to look back hundreds of years for a comparable totalistic imperative to annihilate entire religions and cultures. A classic example would, of course, be the attempt of the Catholic Church to expunge New World Cultures. As Manuel Aguilar-Moreno writes in A Handbook to Life in the Aztec World,

"On their quest to eradicate Mesoamerican culture, the Spaniards toppled indigenous sacred structures and built Catholic churches and other edifices over them. Oftentimes, rubble from the destroyed indigenous sites was used in the construction of colonial palaces and Catholic edifices such as the cathedral and many other churches in Mexico City. This not only sanctified the space and legitimized the Catholic Church but also sent the natives the message that the Catholic Church was indeed supreme to the heathen and "demonic" spiritualit