Jerry Landers, an assistant manager at a Food World grocery store in Burbank, California, receives a letter summoning him to a meeting with God the following day. Jerry and his wife, Bobbie, dismiss it as a practical joke and he tears the note up and throws it away. However, the next day, the note turns up in a head of lettuce at the store and Jerry feels compelled to honor the request. He goes to the appointment in downtown Los Angeles, California, and finds an office with nothing but a chair and an intercom and he is greeted by a voice on the speaker. The voice attempts to convince the dubious Jerry that he really is God by demonstrating that Jerry is on the twenty-seventh floor of a building that actually has only seventeen floors and talking to him through Jerry’s supposedly broken car radio. God informs Jerry that he wants him to spread the word that God exists. His wife does not believe Jerry and suggests that they go on vacation and visit his brother-in-law, who is a therapist, but Jerry insists he is not crazy. The following day, God speaks to Jerry in the shower and then appears to him in the guise of an elderly man. When Jerry asks him how He can permit so much suffering in the world, God explains that the world is based on luck and free will. God tells Jerry that it is up to him to inform the world to heed his message, treat one another better, and look after the earth’s natural resources. God urges him to go to the press. Jerry tells Briggs, a Los Angeles Times reporter, that God asked him to be His messenger, but the journalist is skeptical. Later, God appears to Jerry at the grocery store and asks him to go for a drive. Jerry asks for a sign and God makes it rain inside the car. Jerry returns to the newspaper and again tries to convince Briggs. The next day, the newspaper runs a story that includes Jerry among tales of various religious fanatics and Bobbie is mortified. Jerry explains that he has now seen God and needs her to believe him. She allows that Jerry believes he spoke to God, and they attempt to explain the situation to their children, Adam and Becky, but the boy and girl hope their father is just going through a phase. Later, a television news program picks up the story and the media surrounds the Landers’ Tarzana, California, home. A Food World executive warns Jerry not to make any more claims that he has spoken to God if he wants to keep his job. God tells Jerry that there are no guarantees in life, and his job is a small price to pay for saving the world. When Jerry picks up Adam at school, his son is embarrassed to be seen with him. Bobbie pleads with Jerry not to jeopardize his career. Later, Jerry appears as a guest on the Dinah Shore television show, on which a Los Angeles Police Department sketch artist produces a drawing of God based on Jerry’s description. After the show airs, people begin to recognize Jerry. Bobbie is extremely upset when a crowd of religious zealots gathers outside the Landers’ house. A committee of religious leaders of various faiths calls Jerry before them to verify his story. The committee sequesters Jerry in a hotel with fifty questions written in Aramaic, which he is to answer with God’s help. God dictates the answers to Jerry and instructs him to take them directly to Reverend Willie Williams, an evangelical preacher, whom God calls a fraud. Jerry attends Reverend Williams’s revival meeting at the Shrine Auditorium and tells Williams’s followers what God said. When Reverend Williams sues Jerry for slander, Jerry acts as his own attorney and calls God to the witness stand. The judge threatens Jerry with contempt of court, but God enters the courtroom and testifies. Everyone in court can see and hear Him and He performs a card trick and makes himself disappear to prove his legitimacy; however, when the audio recording made by the court clerk is played back, God’s voice cannot be heard and His testimony disappears from the stenographer’s transcription. The judge dismisses the slander charge against Jerry, but rules there is no evidence that God appeared despite their mutual experience of the phenomena. Jerry loses his job at Food World, collects his final check, and says goodbye to his co-workers. As he drives away, Jerry hears a payphone ringing in a park and stops to answer it. God waits in the adjacent phone booth. Jerry asks if they failed and God assures him that they succeeded in getting His word out and now they just have to see what happens.