Deion Sanders has never been shy about mixing his faith with his persona. The man who once called himself “Prime Time” now coaches under the name “Coach Prime,” and his public expressions of Christianity tend toward the visible and the vocal. When a short clip surfaced showing him appearing to launch into what some are labeling tongues, the online reaction split along predictable lines. Some celebrated it. Others mocked. A few tried to explain it away.
The clip making the rounds comes from after Colorado’s 52-21 win over Weber State on Saturday. Not before kickoff. Not in the middle of some crisis. After a lopsided victory in which the Buffaloes put up more than fifty points and handled their business against an FCS opponent the oddsmakers had already installed as more than a three-touchdown underdog. The blowout was a baseline, not a surprise. The setting was triumph, the kind of moment where the flesh is already inclined to speak loudly.
From a Reformed perspective, the episode simply confirms how thoroughly modern claims have detached themselves from the biblical gift they claim to represent. Scripture records tongues as the supernatural ability to speak actual human languages previously unknown to the speaker. The apostles in Acts 2 were understood by men from every nation. Paul demanded that tongues in the church be interpreted so the body could be edified. The gift was never a private emotional release or a form of ecstatic speech for its own sake. It served a specific purpose in the foundation period of the church and then ceased.
So…
Uh…
Yea…@AltitudeSR pic.twitter.com/yQ0NzBLV3t— Darren McKee (@DMacSportsCO) September 13, 2026
What the post-game footage shows does not match that pattern. There is no evidence of known languages, no interpretation offered, and no indication that the moment served the edification of anyone present. If the sounds were simply the overflow of adrenaline after a dominant win against a team the line had already dismissed, they belong in the category of human excitement, not the category of New Testament sign gifts. Attaching the label “tongues” to emotional vocalization does not transform the one into the other.
The timing after a 52-21 victory only sharpens the point. The biblical gift of tongues was not given as a celebration mechanism or a way to mark athletic success against a heavy underdog. It was a confirmatory sign attached to the apostolic ministry and the spread of the gospel across language barriers. When modern displays appear most readily in moments of personal or team triumph, the disconnect with Scripture becomes even more obvious. The Spirit does not exist to validate our highlight reels or to punctuate a result the spread had already priced in.
Sanders has referenced a previous episode years ago in which he believed he spoke in tongues during a medical emergency. That earlier claim already sat outside the biblical description. This latest instance follows the same trajectory: public, experiential, and detached from the careful, intelligible, edifying purpose laid out in the New Testament. The pattern is consistent even when the external circumstances shift from hospital bed to post-game podium after a win the oddsmakers treated as routine.
None of this requires speculation about motives. It requires measuring every claim against the word of God rather than against the emotional temperature of the room or the final score. The Holy Spirit is not absent from the life of the church. He convicts, regenerates, sanctifies, and applies the word with power. He simply does not repeat the sign gifts that served their temporary purpose and then gave way to the completed canon and the ordinary means of grace.
One Response
Fascinating, Ray, that you have created a theological statement out of thin air with no Scripture to back it. I’m referring to your claim that tongues “served a specific purpose in the foundation period of the church and then ceased” and “the sign gifts . . . served their temporary purpose and then gave way to the completed canon and the ordinary means of grace.”
Much of your commentary and critique is borne up by Scripture. But these specific claims?