Stranger: 'You'll be playing Jesus'

The lead actor in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" says six months before he auditioned for the part he received an eerie sign.

A stranger came up to him and said, "You'll be playing Jesus," James Caviezel related in a documentary to be aired Sunday on PAX TV.

The controversial film on the final 12 hours of the life of Christ is set to open Ash Wednesday, Feb. 25. Increasing demand has bumped the number of theaters from 2,000 to 2,800.

Caviezel – who notes his initials are J.C. and he was the age of Jesus, 33, during the filming – says he has had fans bow down before him, the New York Daily News reported.

Gibson says he regarded a similar experience as a sign he should make the film.

A strange French woman walked up to him, he recalled, and said, "Jesus loves you."

"There were signals like this all over the place," Gibson said in the documentary.

In popular culture, one of the most common "signs" from God is being struck by lightning, and that is exactly what happened to Caviezel during filming of the Sermon on the Mount scene.

He described the scene in an interview with Newsweek magazine.

"About four seconds before it happened it was quiet, and then it was like someone slapped my ears," Caviezel said. "I had seven or eight seconds of, like, a pink, fuzzy color, and people started screaming. They said I had fire on the left side of my head and light around my body. All I can tell you is that I looked like I went to Don King's hairstylist."

In the documentary, Caviezel shrugged off the excruciating pain he endured at times portraying Jesus, including hypothermia from hanging on the cross for hours in a winter wind and an errant metal-tipped whip that actually scourged his back.

"We're not called to the easy life," he said, according to the Daily News. "You either carry your cross, or you're crushed under the weight of it."

Editor's note: Coinciding with the release of Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ," WorldNetDaily has produced one of the most extraordinary editions of its monthly Whistleblower magazine ever produced, titled "THE DAY JESUS DIED."

Read WorldNetDaily's extensive coverage of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."