When PHP & Apache were working fine, was it the default that installs with 7.2?
You should look into DSO and APXS on apache. It is much easier when you need to recompile your php.
Is there an entry in your /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf like..
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
If that does exist, make sure that is isn't between tags like,
<IfDefine PHP> .... </IfDefine>
That would only load if you were telling it to load the DSO module php.
Just a couple of thoughts.