I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and who will also share in the glory that will be revealed.
Construing "witness of the sufferings" as meaning an eyewitness of the crucifixion, however, some are "inclined to doubt this, for we are told that after the arrest in the garden, 'all the disciples forsook him and fled'  (Matthew 26:56)."[7] But there is no validity to the view that Peter did not actually see the crucifixion.  He could well have been among the number mentioned by Luke who beheld the event "from afar" (Luke 23:49); for Mark, shortly after saying that all the apostles forsook him and fled, placed Peter in the courtyard as an observer of the trials (Mark 14:50-54); and even beyond this, there is the fact that Peter witnessed the agony in Gethsemane.