If I understand, which could be problematical? - everyone is seeing the same messege that I am?? the first post is 2/7/07 and you have to go through everything to get to today??

Yes...

But once you get past all the messages having to do with the gathering, it goes back to "newest posts first".

New posts start after Re;"Gathering" unless someone is replying to some other post that appear below the "Sticky".