You're right u did say the mark could be literal but my response focused on your other statement, which seemed to contradict the earlier. My view of Revelation is that it's a mixture of literalism and symbolism, I take literally what can be and what clearly can not be as not.. of course I leave open the possibility of being wrong but since I believe the Lord does want to prepare us for this time than a decent amount of literalness has to be there.

The reason why no other generation could have said to have been the last is that only ours has witnessed the rebirth of Israel, scripture is clear that this had to have had occurred before anything could happen.