That is, of course, a very Gnostic thing to say. The Gnostics, who believed that eternal salvation came from the secret teachings of hidden knowledge (Gnostics = the Knowers) rather than by faith, were one of the earliest and most pernicious heresies faced by the church, and Evangelicals in particular still have an appalling tendency to look for more and additional hidden truths in their usual parade of frauds and scammers and batshit insane and peddlers in esoterica, I have heard it all my life. That is how you get bullshit like this:
It is always about the shekel. Keep reading after John 3:16:
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. --John 3:17-19
