Prayer Meeting Anyone?

"It is written," he said to them, " 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a den of robbers." Matthew 21:13 (NIV)

There was a time when churches met weekly for prayer. During the great revivals, people cried out to God until the wee hours of the morning, without concern for comfort or loss of sleep. What has happened? Today, it's hard to find a church that still holds a weekly prayer meeting. Yet the times are desperate. If ever our country and the church needed prayer it's now. Earthquakes, famines, floods, natural disasters of every kind are more and more frequent. Nations war against each other and the threat of nuclear war grows. Christians are persecuted, thrown into prison and even murdered--wickedness abounds. Our children are killing each other on campuses across America and there is no public place that can be considered safe. All the things described as being evidence of the end times are here--NOW--and the birth pains are growing stronger by the minute. Why are the pastors not sounding the alarm? Why are they not calling their people to prayer? The silence in the church is deafening.