I'm getting an undefined method `each' for nil:NilClass...but it is defined?

I've been searching for hours but I can't find the answer anywhere. I'm new to ruby on rails and I can't figure out how to fix this. What caused the problem is that I moved an instance variable from one file to another and now no links are working and the error always displays: undefined method `each' for nil:NilClass

here is my code:

Application.html.erb:

    <% number = 1 %>
      <% @projects.each do |project| %>
      <%= link_to project, id: "a-#{number}" do %>
      <div class="flex">
          <div class="each--project" id="project-<%= number %>">
              <h3><%= project.title %></h3>
              <p class="date"><%= project.created_at.strftime("%A, %b %d")%></p>
              <p class="content"><%= project.description %></p>
          </div>
      </div>
      <% number = number + 1 %>
      <% end %>
      <% end %>

application_controller.rb

    class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
      def index
         @projects = Project.all
      end
      protect_from_forgery with: :exception
    end

projects_controller

        class ProjectsController < ApplicationController
          before_action :find_project, only: [:show, :edit, :update, :destroy]
          before_action :authenticate_user!, except: [:index, :show]
          def index
           @projects = Project.all.order("created_at desc")
          end

          def new
           @project = Project.new
          end

          def create
           @project = Project.new project_params

          if @project.save
           redirect_to @project, notice: "Yay Mia! That project was             saved!"
          else
             render 'new'
          end
         end

         def show
         end

         def edit
         end

         def update
           if @project.update project_params
             redirect_to @project, notice: "Yay Mia! That project was updated!"
           else
             render 'edit'
           end
         end

         def destroy
           @project.destroy
           redirect_to projects_path
         end


         private

         def find_project
           @project = Project.friendly.find(params[:id])
         end

         def project_params
           params.require(:project).permit(:title, :description, :link, :slug)
         end

       end

routes rb

   Rails.application.routes.draw do
     devise_for :users
     resources :posts
     resources :projects
     resources :contacts, only: [:new, :create]
     get 'welcome/index'
     root 'welcome#index'

     get '*path' => redirect('/')
   end

You don't have an index action on the ApplicationController You can however achieve the same thing with a before_action if you want it loaded for all actions in all controllers. This is not something I would recommend though.

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_action :load_projects

  def load_projects
    @projects = Project.all
  end
end

Hint:

<% number = 1 %>
<% @projects.each do |project| %>

can be much better written as

<% @projects.each_with_index do |project, number| %>