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72 Where in Jerusalem Were the Disciples...

“the doors were shut for fear of the Jews” that Jesus came and stood in their midst saying,
“Peace be unto you: as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.”

This house of the Last Supper and of the great Commission is said to have belonged to the
father and mother of St. Mark, and Barnabas his uncle (Col. 5:10), probably resided with
them when he was in Jerusalem. After the crucifixion and ascension it became the general
gathering-place of the disciples. All waited here in prayer until the descent of the Holy
Ghost at Pentecost, and it was probably in its courtyard or outside it that St. Peter preached
his Pentecostal sermon. We are told that it was situated on Mount Zion, and Epiphanius re-
cords that it escaped the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and that it was afterwards
changed into a church....”Besides being described by Epiphanius, it is spoken of by St. Cyril
and St. Jerome, and it has been kept in reverent memory ever since” (Biggs, p. 173) (The
Coming of the Saints, pages 41-42).

In the May/June 1990 issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review is found an article entitled
“Church of the Apostles Found On Mt. Zion” which purports to prove that the site of the “upper
room,” which the author claims was where “the Last Supper had been held, where the apostles re-
turned after witnessing Jesus’ ascension on the Mount of Olives and where Peter delivered his Pen-
tecostal sermon as recorded in Acts 2” is now marked by the supposed traditional tomb of King
David on Mt. Zion.

Bishop Epiphanius (mentioned above), who was a native of the Holy Land and lived from
315 to 403 A.D., left to us the following information:

When the Roman emperor Hadrian visited Jerusalem in 130/131 A.D., there was standing
on Mt. Zion a small church of God. It marked the site of the Hypero-on (Upper Room) to
which the disciples returned from the Mount of Olives after the Lord had been taken up. It
had been built on that part of Sion” (Baldi, Enchiridion, number 733).

This same site is referred to by the early church father Eusebius (265-349) who makes these
claims –

This is the word of the Gospel, which through our Lord Jesus Christ and through the Apos-
tles went out from Sion and was spread to every nation. It is a fact that it poured forth from
Jerusalem and Mt. Sion adjacent to it, on which our Savior and Lord had stayed many times
and where he had taught much doctrine (Demonstratio Evangelica, c. 312 A.D.).

Another piece of so-called evidence for the place of the Pentecost outpouring comes from
the pen of a man by the name of Eucherius -- who wrote in about 440 A.D. Basing his work on
Jerome and other earlier sources, he wrote –

The plain upper part [of Mt. Zion] is occupied by monks’ cells, which surround a church. Its
foundations, it is said, have been laid by the Apostles in reverence to the place of the resur-
rection of the Lord. It was there that they were filled with the Spirit of the Paraclete [the holy
spirit] as promised by the Lord (Baldi, Enchiridion, number 735).

The Berean Voice March-April 2003