Frescoes in the cave churches have regular biblical scenes but also scenes of "warrior-saints" with swords. One church commemorates the counter-attacks of Nicephorus Phocas, who in the 900s took back Antioch and Tarsus from the Muslims. At the Karanlik (Dark) Church, where you can view by flashlight a wall covered with paintings, one fresco of a muscular Jesus -- big biceps and pecs -- is most prominent.
Those Christians saw a clash of civilization that went on for centuries, and their paintings are very much in an Onward Christian Soldiers motif, with lots of red ochre, green, and cobalt blue. In places of Cappadocia without cliffs, the Christians went underground: 32 Thirty-two underground cities probably housed at times 20,000 or more, with multiple entrances and exits for escape.
I visited one underground city at Derinkuyu that went down eight levels and included a church, classroom, baptistry, storerooms, bedrooms, dining rooms, wine cellars, stables on the first and second stories, wells, tombs, and 52 ventilations shafts to a depth of 75 to 90 yards. Christians apparently built the city by hollowing out airshafts and excavating from the sides of the shafts.
And talk about security: Christians built not bolt locks but bolt stones -- two feet thick and weighing half a ton -- that could be rolled across passageways in case of attack. Which leads to a question: What kind of bolt stones do we have today? We need to pray for peace and work to build honest Muslim-Christian friendship. But we must also be discerning, so that terrorists don't force us into a position of weakness where all we can do is hide.