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Thank you for your concern, annalex! And thank you for including the verse in context, DarthVader!

But, of a Truth, dear annalex, it is hardly a "private interpretation" when the author Himself confirms that He is indeed the author. That is, after all, what the passage says (from DarthVader's post:)

20 First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, 21 because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.*

Unless of course you doubt Him. Or perhaps you doubt that He would confirm it to me, personally?

But of course I know otherwise because I have known Him personally for nigh onto a half century. Moreover, all Christians should come to know Him this way (John 1-4, 14-17, Romans 8, I Cor 2, etc:)

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall [your] heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? - Luke 11:13

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:9

Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. - I John 4:13

I think God devised the Scriptures as the primary means for the Holy Spirit to reach God's children. I honestly don't know the extent of the Holy Spirit's work outside of Scripture, but I would never deny it.

"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the LORD." -- 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

As far as knowing God through nature, that's a little different. I do believe the beauty of God's creation is a gift. But I tend to like how Katherine Hepburn sized up the matter to Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen."

"Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above."

8~)

I have so much to learn, Alamo-Girl, but I don't at all feel troubled by that fact. When I study Scripture, I don't have this predetermined idea that I necessarily will fully understand even that which seems plain to me. We are to walk in faith, believing and confessing that He Lives (I thought you might like this site because he's a physicist and you're a science girl), and I'm happy to leave the rest to Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

it is hardly a "private interpretation" when the author Himself confirms that He is indeed the author

This is why I was puzzled by the reference to context: St. Paul clearly says (v. 16 and following) "we were eyewitnesses of his greatness". Hence, what is "private" to him is anything that is not succeeding from the apostles, the "holy men of God", who received the inspiration of the Holy Ghost not in ther minds but in observable fact: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost", Jn 20:22.