All posts show up on one page even though I set wordpress to show 28 posts only

Hello I have set my wordpress settings to only display 28posts on each page. However my site keeps display every post ever made all on one page.
when i click older posts, it just shows same thing.

ive pasted my index.php code here : https://wordpress.pastebin.ca/1750213

this is the portion from that index.php that calls the posts:
[Code moderated as per the Forum Rules. Please use the pastebin]

my theme is based off of chris wallace’s gallery theme but heavily modified. basically just used his method to call posts on the index.php