Growing up Mennonite, David A.R. White didn’t watch a lot of movies. Before the age of eighteen he’d only seen one in a theater. But God planted a desire in his heart to perform.
“When I told my parents I wanted to pursue a film career, they looked at me like I was crazy!” he says. “But they supported me in it, saying as long as I followed the Lord, that’s what they cared about the most.” He moved to Hollywood to pursue his dreams at nineteen. A year later he made his first Christian film, Second Glance. “I thought I’d only do one,” he says. “Then God gave me another, and another.”
Now a co-founder of the premier Christian movie studio PureFlix Entertainment, David is not only still acting but he’s producing and directing too. “We want to create and distribute movies that uplift and inspire the human spirit instead of tearing it down,” David says. “Movies that bring people to higher levels of insight into who God is and the purpose He has for their lives.”
Jerusalem Countdown is his latest project. Based on the best-selling book by Pastor John Hagee, it’s an end times thriller in the vein of 24. “There are a lot of end times movies out there,” David says. “I’ve done my share of them, but this one is a little different because we deal with so many modern events. It also has the best Rapture scene I’ve ever seen on film.”
With top-notch actors like Lee Majors, Randy Travis, and Stacy Keach alongside David in the lead FBI agent role, it’s a movie that wasn’t without its share of filming difficulties. “We shot in a blizzard in December in Michigan,” David says with a chuckle. “I didn’t get to wear gloves or a hat or anything!”
Watch the movie trailer: Jerusalem Countdown