In a recent episode of the Premier Unbelievable podcast, theologian N.T. Wright was handed a golden opportunity to make clear the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus Christ. Instead, he picked it up like a wet sponge, flung it at the wall, and watched it slide down into a puddle of postmodern confusion.

The host posed the kind of question that demands biblical clarity:

“God created a hundred billion people, most of whom never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus, merely because of geography or the accidents of history, and are they damned for all time, simply because of where they were born, where they were raised, and they never had the opportunity to hear the gospel?” (Video clip at end of article)

Wright’s answer? A meandering labyrinth of anthropological musing, missionary anecdotes, vague references to Acts 17, and an impressive display of theological hand-waving. He opens:

“As Paul says in Acts 17, he wants all human beings to feel after him and find him… there is something about the magnetic pull of the God in whose image we are all made, and some human beings will always be drawn in that direction.”

“Magnetic pull.” As though humanity were iron filings just waiting to be sprinkled across God’s refrigerator.

He proceeds to invoke the experiences of missionaries encountering remote tribes who, upon hearing the gospel, reportedly responded with, “We thought there must be something like this.” This, according to Wright, is evidence that these tribes were already somehow reaching out to God through the fog of general revelation. He calls it “preparation.”

“God… has not left himself without witness,” Wright says, quoting Acts 14. He claims that where people “respond to that,” God “accepts them.”

And just like that, Wright floats a theological balloon with no string. Acceptance without repentance. Salvation without the Savior. Revelation without the Word.

He then offers a curious hypothetical:

“Supposing somebody else down the street had also been following the light they knew, but hadn’t got that visitation from Peter. What would have happened to them?”

This is where Wright tries to sidestep the trap he’s created with a deceitful and quite frankly dishonest redirect:

“Our modern Western obsession with heaven and hell may be leading us astray… It actually goes back to the Middle Ages.”

Of course. Blame the medievals. Because nothing screams biblical clarity like a historian brushing off eternal judgment as a Western psychological disorder.

Then comes this:

“There are many styles of evangelism which have been laying it down the line. Unless you come forward and say a prayer right now… supposing you die tonight, you will go to hell. I’m not saying that’s entirely wrong. I’m saying it might just be misleading.”

Now, I am no fan of altar calls, as I believe they often make false converts. But isn’t it far more misleading to tell a drowning man he may or may not need the lifeboat, depending on whether the currents feel welcoming today?

What Wright is offering isn’t the gospel. It’s a spiritual safety net sewn together with threads of cultural anthropology and ecclesiastical sentimentality. It’s the same golden calf that’s been dancing in the spotlight of post-evangelicalism for decades—the false gospel of sincerity.

And it isn’t new. Back in 1997, Billy Graham sat across from Robert Schuller and told the world that people might be saved without ever knowing the name of Jesus, provided they were sincerely seeking “the light they had.” Graham said:

“They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts that they need something… and I think that they are saved.”

Schuller beamed. Heresy had just been baptized in prime time.

John MacArthur didn’t let it slide. In a 2002 sermon, MacArthur said:

“That is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is not the message of the New Testament. That is not what faithful Christians have died for across the centuries.”

And now, with MacArthur only recently laid to rest, it’s hard not to hear his voice still echoing from eternity:

“N.T. Wright is N.T. Wrong.”

The Scriptures do not stammer here. They do not mumble. They do not equivocate. “There is salvation in no one else,” declares Acts 4:12, “for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Romans 10 strips the paint off Wright’s theological walls:

“How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?… So faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

They won’t hear by guessing. They won’t believe by feeling. They won’t be saved by squinting at the stars or meditating on tree bark. They need a preacher. They need the gospel. They need Christ.

The gospel is not a divine mood. It is not ambient grace. It is not an “inner light.” It is the proclamation of a crucified and risen Savior to dead sinners who must repent and believe.

If people could be saved by sincerity, the apostles wasted their lives. Paul’s beatings, Peter’s martyrdom, Stephen’s stoning—pointless theater. If tribal mysticism counts, the Great Commission becomes the Great Offense. If general revelation is enough, then Christ’s blood was a needless tragedy.

But the Bible says otherwise. It says man is dead in trespasses and sins. It says the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. It says no one seeks for God. It says faith comes by hearing. It says whoever does not believe is condemned already. It says Jesus is the only way.

And every time someone builds an alternate path—a scenic route to salvation that bypasses the cross—they are not doing God’s work. They are trafficking in false hope. They are padding hell with silk pillows. They are working not for Christ, but for the deceiver who longs to dull the urgency of the gospel.

This is not pastoral nuance. This is not theological depth. This is gospel suppression. And those who peddle it should not be platformed—they should be rejected as the false teachers they are.

They are not rescuing sinners. They are rocking them to sleep.