I have one topic on my forum that now has 7 pages of comments or posts. my question is,.....is there a way i can change the order of those pages from ascending to descending so my members and guest can always see the most recent stuff without scrolling through or automatically going to the next page

Can't change it for just one thread.

Can be done for the whole forum via this.
General>Categories And Forums
click on any forum name
Sort the posts of a topic by :Posts date(Most recent in first)
Save